SATA

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Q

~ Q ~

Spoke with someone who's very dismissive of SATA in general, mainly 'cos
it requires an interface per device therefore becomes a star rather
chain but being serial that aspect makes sense to me - to maintain max
throughput per device (unlike USB that shares the total b/w). The
conversation turned to other devices still needing the parallel ATA bus!
I don't know of any SATA DVDs etc. If true, this seems very messy to me.
Does serial ATA preclude other devices?
 
And i also believe SATA2.0 or whatever the next iteration is, will be
chainable....


DaveW said:
SATA optical drives should be available later this year.
Click to expand...
 
Spoke with someone who's very dismissive of SATA in general, mainly 'cos
it requires an interface per device therefore becomes a star rather
chain but being serial that aspect makes sense to me - to maintain max
throughput per device (unlike USB that shares the total b/w). The
conversation turned to other devices still needing the parallel ATA bus!
I don't know of any SATA DVDs etc. If true, this seems very messy to me.
Does serial ATA preclude other devices?
Click to expand...

No, you can use other PATA devices along with SATA HDDs.
 
nooneimportant said:
And i also believe SATA2.0 or whatever the next iteration is, will be
chainable....
Click to expand...


When are SATA II hard drives due?...does Western Digital have any plans for
SATA II Raptors??
 
Gary Tait - typed:
No, you can use other PATA devices along with SATA HDDs.
Click to expand...

Which immediately weakens the case for better airflow when IDE ribbons
share the same bed. Perhaps I should have asked: does serial ATA as a
standard preclude other types of devices apart from internal hard discs
on a serial ATA bus? The answer seems to be no it doesn't, despite no or
few other devices being available.

I do have doubts about the current implementation of SATA. The
connectors are shite - one story that doesn't impress was an engineer
shipping units with them glued down so the customers would get a machine
that would work out of the box. Electronics engineers should never be
let loose on mechanical design 'cos too many will spend 99% of their
effort on the electronics then badly under-estimate the expertise needed
for the mechanical part but never admit such. I have no idea to what
extent this applies here but am in a belligerent mood & have witnessed
this time after time through working in electronics. My other beef is
that the whole SATA effect has been very tentative IMO (a bit like 3G) -
launch with other devices, TQC from the outset & not as a beer-tomorrow
promise (with interface chips that support it). There's a lot to be said
for proprietary design that don't have to fight external committee's
technical egos & agendas, probably faster to market as well. <end of
tirade ;)
 
All change - 64bit, DRM, SATA II (with NQC & asynchronous I/O), Blu-Ray,
EFI, BTX, DDRII, PCI Express!
Click to expand...

When are motherboards due that support all these new technologies?
 
Richard Dower - typed:
When are motherboards due that support all these new technologies?
Click to expand...

The Intel sponsored BTX has EFI Bios, SATA, DDRII & PCI Express as well
as a more predefined layout that includes a shrouded tunnel for the CPU
with an adjacent case exhaust fan but backwards compatibility with ATX
PSUs. The layout includes potentially huge passive heatsinks attached to
mounting holes around the CPU socket. The design is supposed to support
more powerful CPUs heat output & be QUIETER. Whether or not the
parallel, PS/2 sockets remain is undecided. Expect loads of USB ports:
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=article&dId=611

SATA II's Native Command Queuing seems to be an extension of TCQ that
would work for single user work stations if & when OSs & apps are
optimised to use asynchronous I/O. More on SATA II's NCQ:
http://www.serialata.org/about/pdf/Native Command Queuing Final.pdf

Most end-users will be either welcoming or indifferent towards much of
this technology. DRM will be most unwelcome. The MP3 format with DRM
will be dead in the water. EFI Bios technology could in theory disable a
stolen PC when it connects to the WWW. There are many other relevant
technologies such as removing the FSB, redesigning how CPU's address
memory space (buffer overrun protection). Blu-Ray is becoming available
& will compete with dual layer DVD+R but still should have over double
the capacity (~23-27GB max) in a single side/layer.
 
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