Serial ATA

[Eldest_One]

When you hook up drives to the M/B do you daisy chain them or does the cable have multiple connections like reg IDE? Also how many drives can you hook up at one time?

[-=Tawcan=-]

I saw a Seagate ATA drive in the AMD Tech Tour. The guy showed me and the cable only had 1 connector.

[markkuk]

Serial ATA is a point-to-point interface, one motherboard connector drives only one drive. See this article by Intel or read the spec.

[Tank]

its really sad about SATA with only 1 HDD to cable. seems like SCSI will still dominate with up to 15 devices per channel. SCSI is getting cheap too

www.SCSI4me.com

www.jjwei.com

[Big B-man]

I think that's part of the reason to need ATA drives: Keep It Simple, uh, Silly The new SATA interfaces are so small that they'll be able to save some space on the motherboard.

S ATA is much simpler than SCSI--which is good for certain consumers. I wouldn't mind a motherboard chipset with SCSI instead of IDE, but SATA will be much easier to configure.

[Tank]

i got rounded cables for mine very good for space saving but if SATA does break 7200rpm it wont be worth it. there really wont be that much increase in performace. plus SCSI doent use a lot of cpu power about 5% while the onboard chips for IDE use as much as 41%.

[Ironheart]

The performance leap with SATA will be substantial. From what I have read we can expect transfer rates of 150MB/s (not theoretical, actual) minimum.

[Andrew LB]

I agree that Serial ATA is going to be bada$$.

[astrochimp]

"The performance leap with SATA will be substantial. From what I have read we can expect transfer rates of 150MB/s (not theoretical, actual) minimum."

I'd like to read that if you could post a link.

We have ata133 already, yet drives that can't even fill a 66Mhz bus. How is serial gunna allow these drives to shoot all the way up to 150Mhz?

[Ironheart]

I'm specifically referring to this article at Anandtech, but there are others. A quote:

The future of Serial ATA is being insured with careful planning. In fact, Serial ATA is expected to last us at least 10 years. Future data rates may be introduced simply by increasing the clock. In fact the roadmap already calls for two follow-ups to Serial ATA, which will double and then double again the transfer rates. Look for Serial ATA 1X to be available in mid 2001 and offer 1.5 gigabits/sec, which translates to an effective 150MB/s. Since Serial ATA will be a point to point protocol, the concept of master/slave no longer exists and each drive will not need to share bandwidth.

[JungleMan]

Originally posted by astrochimp
"The performance leap with SATA will be substantial. From what I have read we can expect transfer rates of 150MB/s (not theoretical, actual) minimum."

I'd like to read that if you could post a link.

We have ata133 already, yet drives that can't even fill a 66Mhz bus. How is serial gunna allow these drives to shoot all the way up to 150Mhz?

I would assume that we will be seeing some 10000rpm S-ATA drives. 7200rpm used to be exclusive to SCSI, until a few years ago.

[tenax]

Originally posted by astrochimp
"The performance leap with SATA will be substantial. From what I have read we can expect transfer rates of 150MB/s (not theoretical, actual) minimum."

I'd like to read that if you could post a link.

We have ata133 already, yet drives that can't even fill a 66Mhz bus. How is serial gunna allow these drives to shoot all the way up to 150Mhz?

roadmap is:

150 mhz (2003)

300 mhz (2004)

600 mhz (i believe by 2006)

this was from the seagate guy i talked to at the amd tech tour..he was not touting seagate drives in particularly, but what serial ata will be doing period so i see no reason to lie or exaggerate

[astrochimp]

"roadmap is:

150 mhz (2003)

300 mhz (2004)

600 mhz (i believe by 2006)

this was from the seagate guy i talked to at the amd tech tour..he was not touting seagate drives in particularly, but what serial ata will be doing period so i see no reason to lie or exaggerate"

YES, but do you get my point..we HAVE 133MHZ bus capability NOW. Yet the DRIVES themselves can only output like 50MHZ continuously.

Will the 150MHZ be the bus speed but the drives will only be able to output 66MHZ?

Need Answers

[tenax]

yes, i understand where you're coming from..and by the way, sorry for the gap..mhz rather than mb/sec..dohhh..i've been spending too much time at the processor talk forum anyway, you're right..continuous transfer speed is really more like 50mb/sec for conventional drives..if you are asking will 150 really be 150mb/sec..too early to tell i think given no one that i know of has them to test, mbs with serial are just starting to be certified...wait and see is the simple answer i guess..unless someone else has seen more info on the efficiency of serial transfer. i have read that part of the serial versus conventional idea is that the cables will be far less suspectible to "noise" that is common with conventional cables and is a big part of the reason why in the real world, we don't get the transfer speeds we expect. i also expect that given the fact that you'll have to basically replace EVERYTHING in your setup (mobo, drives) that many people will be well behind the release/purchase curve of this technology, unless they are building an entirely new system or "must have" the transfer speeds for business solutions. that's where i am anyway...