Investigating SATA 6Gbps

The new SATA standard is finally here and we've hit 6Gbps after what feels like an eternity at 3Gbps. The upgrade comes thanks to several industry partners:

• Marvell, providing the new 88SE9128 SATA 6Gbps chip,
• Seagate, with its latest 2TB Barracuda XT hard drive
• Asus, for its P7P55D Premium motherboard
• Gigabyte, for its GA-P55A-UD6 motherboard

What's new from the new standard then? Well there's a new Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming command for Isochronous data transfers and NCQ management features, and a new connector for 1.8in hard drives, but the most fundamental part of the update for us is the speed bump.

Note that just like SATA 3Gbps should not ever have been called "SATA II", SATA 6Gbps should never be referred to as "SATA III" according to the official SATA-IO documents. And rightly so, because it's confusing to consumers! bit-tech