Serial ATA White Paper

Introduction
This paper provides information about the new serial data interface that is
replacing the ATA interface for future storage peripherals such as hard drives and
optical disks.

WHY SETTLE?

The Internet has propelled a whole new generation of data-intensive applications requiring storage
architectures that can scale on the fly and remain available all the time. With audio/video streaming, web
commerce, and data warehousing applications, to name a few, storage will have to be a scalable network
resource that can deliver capacity and data on the fly.

However, in today’s world of shrinking IT budgets, many companies are forced to settle for what they can
afford. Traditionally, high performance technology was only available to high-level enterprise companies who
were willing and able to dig deep into their corporate pockets. But if you’re pockets don’t run as deep, should
you really have to settle?

Because “It’s ALL About Your Data”, Promise Technology doesn’t believe in settling.

Promise Technology, Inc., the originator and global leader in ATA RAID storage solutions is committed to its
goal of creating and promoting breakthrough affordable technology that will ensure that you never have to
settle again. Promise is dedicated to providing high performance, reliable solutions at attractive price points.
That’s why we are pioneering the way for support of cost-effective, high performance Serial ATA
architectures by providing highly reliable, mature solutions as Serial ATA products come to market this year.

TRENDS
ATA, (Advanced Technology
Attachment), has been the main storage
bus since the early days of personal
computers. Continued improvements in speed
and the relatively low cost of ATA devices
resulted in dominance in the PC market.
The current ATA standard is a parallel interface,
meaning that multiple bits of data are
transmitted at one time.

Advances in high speed networking coupled

with the limitations of the current parallel
bus architecture have created a
bottleneck in today’s networks. This has
resulted in a shift away from traditional
interfaces in favor of serial
connections to the disk drive with the
associated scalability, reliability, and
performance benefits
INTRODUCING SERIAL ATA
Designed to meet the needs of networked storage, A side-by-side comparison of a Parallel ATA hard drive (left)
SATA (Serial ATA) was created to address the and a Serial ATA hard drive (right).
increased data rate demand while at the same time
resolving many issues that prevented today’s ATA
interface from being widely used in the enterprise. SATA grew out of the need to support growing bandwidth
requirements that current Parallel ATA would be unable to maintain in future years.

Serial ATA 3– 600MB/sec Serial ATA can be referred to as an

SCSI 4– 320MB/sec evolutionary replacement for the
Serial ATA 2– 300MB/sec Parallel ATA physical storage
SCSI 3– 160MB/sec Serial A ta is 50% faster interface. The new Serial ATA
Serial ATA 1– 150MB/sec than Parallel A TA architecture introduces a data
Parallel ATA/100– 100MB/sec communication standard for fast-
Parallel ATA/66– 66MB/sec talking drives, which will effectively
increase bandwidth by 50%,
assuring maximum performance.
Serial ATA’s point-to-point
architecture directly connects each device to the host via a dedicated link. Each device, therefore, has the
entire bandwidth dedicated to it, so there is no interaction between devices. Serial ATA eliminates parallel
ATA’s master/slave relationship, in which the master device controls the other slave device on the bus,
allowing direct communications with any device on the bus.

Serial ATA architectures only change the physical interface layer. It conforms to the ATAPI (AT Attachment
Packet Interface) command set, which is the standard used in today’s ATA drives. It also maintains register and
software backward compatibility with Parallel ATA. No device driver changes are necessary and the Serial ATA
architecture is transparent to the BIOS and the operating system. This means that Serial ATA is software
compatible to parallel ATA drives ensuring a smooth transition from software and driver perspectives, allowing
existing applications to work seamlessly with Serial ATA drives.

The current Serial ATA specification maps out a 10 year growth plan with three generations of speed
enhancements with generation one running at 150 MB/s (to stay ahead of disk data transfer rate and to
remove the bottleneck that may occur with 100 MB/s parallel ATA), followed by 300 MB/s and 600 MB/s
respectively.

SERIAL ATA FEATURE SET

Cabling — Current Parallel ATA cables are bulky, as well as being limited to 18 inches in length. The wide, flat
parallel ATA ribbon cables can be difficult to route, and their shape and bulk can restrict air flow inside a chassis or
storage enclosure. Serial ATA cables are much smaller and can be up to 1-meter (about 39 inches). The smaller
serial cable is easier to route inside the chassis, making them well-suited for storage boxes and high-density server
requirements. The smaller diameter cable can also help improve airflow inside the chassis and will facilitate future
designs of smaller PC systems.
 Serial Transmission — Using 8B/10B Serial transmission to transfer data over the serial cable eliminates crosstalk
and other problems that may occur with parallel data transmission. 8B/10B serial transmission is used in numerous
technologies including Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel. This encoding data integrity checking is required during
high speed data transfer.

Data Robustness — Serial ATA will offer more through checking and error correcting capabilities than are currently
available with Parallel ATA. The end-to-end integrity of transferred commands and data can be guaranteed across
the serial bus.

Low ASIC Pin Count — Enables ASIC’s to be smaller, which improves cost-effectiveness on both devices and
hosts.

Software Compatibility — Serial ATA is compatible at the register level with Parallel ATA. This means Serial ATA
requires no existing software and operating systems in order to function, and it provides backward compatibility with
existing operating environments. To system software, a Serial ATA device is the same as a legacy ATA device. From
a software point of view, this compatibility with legacy hardware ensures an easy transition and faster acceptance.

Hot Plug — Though Promise has long supported hot plug on the Parallel ATA side with its patented Sideband
Technology, hot plug has not been part of the ATA specification. Serial ATA allows devices to be hot-plugged and
inserted directly into receptacles. The Serial ATA protocol provides the mechanical and electrical features necessary
to allow devices to be directly inserted and removed while the system is powered.

THE SERIAL ATA FEATURE SET: MORE BANG FOR YOUR

BUCK

As you can see, Serial ATA addresses networking issues such as signal integrity, reduced pin count, low
voltage, and improved cable and connector plants for smaller form factor drives. Such a feature set will
prove to make the Serial ATA technology a viable alternative to SCSI in desktop and server/networked
storage markets—all at a fraction of the cost.

WHY USE PROMISE SERIAL ATA

Promise’s vision for Serial ATA is that its low cost, high reliability and scalable connectivity will create a vast
market for inexpensive networked storage solutions enabling new applications for RAID protected data. As
it has in the past, Promise is leading the way so that the advantages of Serial ATA RAID will be fully realized
across the whole corporate data set. The Serial ATA specification and architecture align with Promise’s
mission of maximizing user return on investment by providing high performance, reliable, and available
technology that won’t put a dent in your pocket books.

Promise’s line of Serial ATA products demonstrate a strong commitment to the next generation of powerful,
yet inexpensive storage devices for the next generation of PCs and servers, creating low cost storage
solutions without compromising performance or reliability, thus leveling the playing fields so that all users
have the freedom to compete.
With 14 years of ATA experience, over 10 million ATA ASIC’s shipped in just the last 3 years, and the most
mature and reliable ATA RAID Engine in the industry, Promise has long since established itself as the leader
of ATA RAID technology. We work closely with virtually every major hard drive manufacturer, tier 1 OEM,
and motherboard maker in their ongoing design and test programs, assuring product compatibility and
feasibility.

We are committed to promoting products that provide

investment protection by reducing the cost and complexity
of deploying mission critical storage services. Also, by
developing and completely owning our own technology
(ASIC, RAID engine, Drivers, and BIOS) Promise has a
clear and unobstructed view of the progress being made
towards long-term technology development and insight into
near-term technology transitions such as Serial ATA.

How did Promise consistently maintain its leadership

position in ATA and ATA RAID? Simple—by not only
meeting our customers’ expectations but exceeding them.
We plan to do the same for Serial ATA. By continuing to
push forward the limits of ATA storage performance and
reliability, as well as driving the move to Serial ATA
architectures that offer performance boosts and greater
design freedoms, Promise will continue to provide fast,
reliable and economical storage solutions well into the
future.

How Can I Benefit from Serial ATA?

Serial ATA is the next generation personal computer (PC) storage interface. It will replace
the Ultra ATA/100 interface used to connect most PCs to their primary storage, which is
projected to become a bottleneck within two years. This paper describes the primary benefit
of the Serial ATA interface, the increase in data rate. Other features and benefits are also
outlined, together with a comparison to alternative storage interfaces. There is a discussion
of the current development program, the promoters and the leading role of Maxtor, which
now includes the disk drive division of Quantum that was acquired in April, 2001. This
introduction to Serial ATA will prepare PC and storage manufacturers to maximize the
advantages of this revolution in the personal storage industry.
The Need for Change
The Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) interface, previously called Integrated Drive
Electronics (IDE), has existed in substantially the same form since 1989, and has become
the highest-volume disk drive interface in production. Maxtor, in its role as the patent
owner, has led continuous improvements to parallel ATA that extended its data transfer rate
from 3.3 Megabytes per second (MB/s) to 100 MB/s, with only one cable change. As PC
processor performance has increased, so have the read/write data rates of hard disk drive
(HDD) heads and media. This disk rate is projected to exceed today's 100 MB/s interface
bandwidth by 2003. Parallel ATA has kept pace in the past, but is nearing its limit, becoming
a performance bottleneck. Serial ATA will eliminate this bottleneck by initially offering 150
MB/s and in the future it will provide significant headroom for future improvements.

Seven key promoters have worked together to develop Serial ATA: APT, Dell, IBM, Intel,
Maxtor, Quantum and Seagate. Of these, Intel has been the leading player on the host side,
with Maxtor taking a key role on the device side.
All of the promoters are recognized leaders in their respective areas. They are collaborating
to leverage their experience with previous interface implementations to ensure that Serial
ATA is successfully adopted by the computer industry.
A major thrust of the development is to create a cost-effective solution for primary storage.
An example of how Maxtor has led this development occurred in October 2000, with
Maxtor’s proposed change in the physical layer communication protocol that will provide a
projected overall cost-saving to end-users of $80 million in the year 2003.
The original specification called for a transmit and receive frequency tolerance of 150 ppm
achievable only by using crystal oscillators costing around $0.50 each. The host already uses
these oscillators. Some devices make use of cost-effective ceramic resonators costing
around $0.10 each. The tolerance of these parts, however, is as large as 6,000 ppm.
The problem for the ceramic resonator is that the specification requires the device to be the
first to transmit critical data at a precise clock frequency. The host uses that data to
determine the transfer speed, which will enable the support of future generation products.
Maxtor recognized the opportunity to provide a lower-cost total solution by redesigning the
protocol so that initially the host also provides a constant frequency clock signal, but without
data content. The device could then use a ceramic resonator source and phase-lock-loop
circuitry to synchronize with and track the host-generated signal. That more accurate source
is used to generate the serial clock from the device back to the host.
This Maxtor solution has been incorporated into the specification and will enable the Serial
ATA system to be more cost effective. In place of the need for two crystal oscillators in a
host/device system, only one is called for and the second clock source can be a ceramic
resonator, saving $0.40 per system. At an estimate of more than 200 million systems in
2003, that adds up to over $80 million in industry savings!
Next Steps
Parallel ATA has succeeded as the primary storage interface for the past 10 years. A team of
leaders in the PC and storage industries has recognized that this interface is now
approaching its limit. This team has leveraged their experience to develop the storage
interface for the next 10 years. The Serial ATA interface is optimized for internal primary
storage and provides the capability for future enhancements. Serial ATA is designed for low
cost, with ease of adoption in mind.
Projected next steps for the Serial ATA program are shown below. It is expected that drives
and PC motherboards incorporating Serial ATA will be available in 2002.

Interface Parallel
ATA Universal Serial Bus
(USB) IEEE 1394
(FireWire or
i.LINK)
Serial ATA
Target Market INTERNAL
storage
devices
EXTERNAL
consumer devices:
(printer, scanner
keyboard, mouse)
EXTERNAL
removable storage
devices
INTERNAL
storage devices
Cost Low > Parallel > Parallel
Requires Royalty
= Parallel
Speed in Year 2000
(MB/s) 100 1.5
(USB 1.1) 50 N/A
Projected Speed in
Year 2002 (MB/s) 100 60
(USB 2.0) 50 150 Generation
1
Projected Speed in
Year 2005 (MB/s) 100 60 200 300 Generation
2
Cable Length (m) 0.45 6.0 per link 4.5 per link 1.0
OS Driver Support Established
parallel USB New 1394 specific Use current
parallel
Bootable Yes No No Yes
Integrated on PC
Motherboard Yes Yes No Yes
Hot Plug No Yes Yes Yes
Introduction
Serial ATA Technology
Today’s computers use parallel ATA hard drives, connected by a 40 or 80 pin ribbon cable to an
ATA controller. This interface, of course, uses a parallel bus, which is reaching its performance
limit with today’s data rates of 100 to 133 MB/sec. Like many legacy interface standards, a
parallel bus was easy to implement and provided sufficient bandwidth when originally introduced,
but the push to higher data rates is now stressing the capabilities of this bus. In the coming year,
Serial ATA drives will be implemented, demonstrating a new standard for hard drive and storage
interface that alleviates the performance limits of parallel ATA. In addition to the higher data
rates, Serial ATA also provides enhanced features such as hot plug capability, EMI reduction
techniques, low voltage signaling and additional power saving features, as well as more
sophisticated data handling commands.

The Serial ATA interface replaces today’s 80 pin ribbon cable with a 4 conductor cable.
Rather than sending out data in parallel, the data from the controller is serialized, and sent
out as a differential signal pair to the target disk device. The disk also sends data on a
differential pair back to the host controller. Simultaneous transmission occurs on both
channels, from host to disk and disk to host. Because of this, Serial ATA is a point-to-
point link, and only supports a single device per controller interface, in contrast to the
primary and secondary support of two drives from a single parallel ATA port. Controllers
can address multiple devices, but each device requires a separate, dedicated port. There
are many benefits of the smaller cabling from the overall system perspective of a PC
manufacturer. The flat, wide ribbon cables are restrictive to air flow within the PC
enclosure, and often require complex folding and assembly to support the devices used
today. With the thinner cable of Serial ATA, airflow restrictions are minimized and
thermal design issues are more easily resolved, as seen in Figure 1.
The initial data rate for Serial ATA is 150 MB/sec of data transfer, requiring a wire speed
of 1.5 GHz for serial data transmission. The specification, published by the Serial ATA
Working Group in August 2001, also calls for second and third generation data rates,
which double to 300 MB/sec and then 600 MB/sec, (with wire speeds of 3.0 Gbps and
6.0 Gbps) respectively. In serializing the data, standard 8b/10b encoding is used and
techniques such as spread spectrum clocking and data scrambling to minimize repetitive
patterns are used to reduce EMI. Serial ATA is also more compatible with the shrinking
feature sizes and power levels used in today’s complex interface chips. Serial ATA, with
it’s differential signaling technique uses only a 250mV swing in it’s data transmission,
versus 3.3V or even 5V for the parallel ATA interface.
In today’s PCs, the southbridge chip provides an integrated hard drive controller. This
controller has two ports, a primary and secondary, and each port can support two drives, a
primary drive and a secondary drive. Thus a total of four ATA based devices can be
connected – typically a bootable hard disk drive, and one or more optical devices such as
a CD-ROM, CD-RW or DVD disk. For support of additional drives, typically the PCI
interface is used, and PCI based ATA controllers can be added to provide connectivity for
additional disks that might be required. An example of this configuration is shown in
Figure 2.
Initial support of Serial ATA devices will be provided through a PCI based controller:
This can be installed on a motherboard directly, or provided through an add in card
connected to the PCI slot on a motherboard. With a 32 bit PCI bus, a data rate of 33 MHz
allows up to 133 MB/sec of data transfer, and a data rate of 66 MHz would allow 266
MB/sec. This would provide sufficient bandwidth for a 2 port Serial ATA controller,
because the sustained transfer rate would be roughly 100 MB/sec.
For enterprise storage systems, such as external RAID devices, more ports would be ideal
– 4, 6 or even 8 ports might be desired. In this case, a PCI-X interface would be better
matched in terms of bus bandwidth. Today, we are already seeing parallel ATA RAID
systems being implemented, because a SCSI based solution is significantly more costly.
With the enhanced features of Serial ATA, an even more robust and flexible RAID system
can be developed. Enhancements to the current Serial ATA specification designed
specifically to address these market requirements are being developed by the Serial ATA-
II working group and will be released later this year.
The Serial ATA protocol is defined as three different layers:
• The transport layer, which interfaces to higher order protocols such as PCI or Parallel ATA.
The transport layer is responsible for interfacing to the ATA register file, interpreting
commands, and giving the link layer blocked tasks.
• The Link layer is responsible for packet framing, the 8b/10b encoding and decoding and
generating and checking the CRC codes. The link layer also handles flow control, buffering
data and primitives as needed to accommodate burst transfers, and data rate variations from
spread spectrum clock use.
• The Phy layer has the 10b encoded data from the Link layer passed to it, where the data is
serialized and sent out over the cable and connector. The Phy layer also is responsible for
deserializing the data received from the other end of the link and interpreting out of band
signaling used for power up and hot plug detect.
The hierarchy of these three layers is shown in Figure 3.

With an appropriate transport layer, it is possible to make a “bridge” chip which can
accept Parallel ATA commands, and convert them to Serial ATA data. These chips can
enable an easy system conversion to Serial ATA, because all PC’s already incorporate
parallel ATA controllers. Most of the initial hard disk drives will also utilize these bridge
chips, thus enabling parallel ATA drives to work with Serial ATA cabling. An example of
this configuration is shown in Figure 4.
Although these approaches will work well as enabling technology on the drive side, there are
some issues with this implementation that make it less desirable than integrated controllers on
the host side. First, with a bridge chip, the parallel ATA interface side will be limited to 100 or 133
Mbytes/sec, because that is the speed of the parallel ATA controllers. Second, with a bridge chip
on the host device, the software driver can only control the parallel ATA controller, and can’t
access the Serial ATA register space. For an integrated controller, access to this register space
allows more robust error handling, and more flexible data transmission. Finally, most bridge chips
take in one parallel ATA interface and have one serial ATA output. Because a standard parallel
ATA port could support two disk drives (primary and secondary), use of a single port bridge chip
reduces the number of devices that could be connected.
At some point, the southbridge will incorporate the Serial ATA technology as a replacement for the
parallel ATA currently supported. There are two possible approaches for this integration. Full
integration of the Serial ATA transport, link and Phy layers would enable direct serial connection
from the southbridge chip. A challenge with the full integration lies in incorporating the high speed
analog blocks of the Phy layer with the extensive digital logic in the southbridge. For many other
high speed serial interfaces, the convention has been to keep these chips, such as networking
interfaces, as discrete chips. A similar convention is found with high speed digital display
interfaces used with external Phy chips rather than integration into the northbridge graphics block.
The alternative integration path, where the digital blocks of the transport and link layers are
incorporated into the southbridge, while supporting an external Phy layer, is more compatible with
the architecture used today. This alternative path is shown in Figure 5 It is even possible to build
a controller which could MUX a PATA port with a SATA link to Phy interface, providing flexibility in
implementation without increasing pin count. The use of an external Phy chip also provides an
easier path to the second generation speeds of 3.0 Gbps, and avoids the yield impact and design
problems during die or process shrinks.
Because the hard disk drives are the only ATA devices pushing the data speeds needed for serial
ATA, the driving force for ATAPI devices to move to Serial ATA is not very strong. Thus it is
expected that most controllers will first convert only one of their ports from parallel to serial ATA,
leaving a legacy parallel port for connection to optical drives. Over time, as optical devices also
evolve, it is expected that a full conversion of parallel to serial ATA interfaces will occur in the
chipset.

Summary:
As seen from the examples outlined above, there are a number of implementation approaches to
enable Serial ATA functionality. A summary of the time frames, relative costs and advantages and
disadvantages of each approach is shown in Table 1. One merit of a PCI-based integrated
controller is that it can be adopted into most PC platforms without requiring any additional
changes. A bridge-based solution is also possible, although this solution is not as robust and
could also be more costly than the integrated controller if multiple chips are used.
The lower cost approach of southbridge chipset integration requires a substantial change in the
chipset architecture, particularly if the Phy layer is incorporated. With an external Phy, the digital
logic needed for the link and transport layers are more readily incorporated, so the barrier for
implementation is not as large.
It is expected that in the initial phase of Serial ATA adoption, integrated PCI based controllers will
predominate, to be supplemented by integrated chipset capability over the following year.

Resources and Call to Action

Call to Action:
System and device manufacturers should begin preparing now for the implementation of Serial
ATA in their platforms. Both host controllers and disk drives enabled with Serial ATA will be
available this year, and rapid adoption is expected over the next year. Numerous advantages of
Serial ATA over parallel ATA are enabled, including higher data rates, lower power consumption,
reduced EMI, and enhanced features such as hot plug capability. This will allow Serial ATA to be
employed not only in desktop PCs and workstations, but in enterprise storage applications as
well.
Feedback:
• To provide feedback about this white paper, please send e-mail to
mhartney@siliconimage.com
For More Information:
• For more information about Serial ATA, see the Serial ATA Working Group web site, available
at:
http://www.serialata.org/

Acronyms and Terms

ATA – AT Attachment
ATAPI – ATA Packet Interface
CD-ROM – Compact Disk – Read Only Media
CD – RW - Compact Disk – Read/Write
CRC – Cyclic Redundancy Check
DVD – Digital Versatile Disk
EMI – Electromagnetic Interference
MUX – multiplexer
PCI – Peripheral Component Interconnect
RAID – Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
SATA – Serial ATA
SCSI – Small Component System Interface
Figures and Tables
This section includes the figures and tables referenced in this paper.

Figure 1:

Parallel ATA Cabling Serial ATA Cabling

Figure 2:

Figure 3:
Figure 4:

Figure 5:

Q1 What is Serial ATA?

A1 Serial ATA is a disk-interface technology developed by a group of the industry's leading
vendors to replace parallel ATA. The group is known as the Serial ATA Working Group.
The Serial ATA 1.0 specification was released in August 2001.
Q2 What are the compelling reasons why Serial ATA is a viable option for server and
NAS networked storage?
A2 1) Scalability — Serial ATA is a point-to-point connection and allows multiple ports to be
aggregated into a single controller that is typically located either on the motherboard or as
an add-in, RAID card. Through backplanes and external enclosures, Serial ATA will be
deployed in high-capacity server and networked-storage environments.

2) Price — Serial ATA was created, with desktop prices in mind, as a replacement for
Parallel ATA. Initial hard disk drives (HDD's) are expected to be priced competitively for
the desktop. With the scalable features of Serial ATA combined with desktop price-points,
greater storage capacity may be realized at a lower total solution cost than with traditional
server and networked storage.
 3) Cabling — Serial ATA specifies a thin, point-to-point connection which allows for easy
cable routing within a system. This avoids master/slave, "daisy-chaining", and termination
issues. Also, better airflow can be realized compared to systems with wider ribbon cables.

3) Performance — Serial ATA technology will deliver 1.5 Gbps (150 MB/sec) of
performance to each drive within a disk drive array.
Q3 When will Serial ATA infrastructure products be shipping in volume?
A3 Individual vendors will best be able to advise on product plans. However, hard disk drives,
cables, enclosures, and controllers are expected to be available to OEM and channel
customers in 2002, with enterprise system vendors shipping platforms with Serial ATA
storage by the second half of the year.
Q4 Where is Serial ATA positioned relative to other interface technologies?
A4 Serial ATA technology provides a new serial interconnect designed to change the way
vendors develop storage systems. The first deployments, where price is an important
issue, are intended for entry-level servers and network-attached storage. As the
infrastructure continues to develop, Serial ATA will penetrate into higher-end servers and
more complex storage systems.
Q5 What is the long-term road map for Serial ATA?
A5 Serial ATA defines a roadmap starting at 1.5 gigabits per second (equivalent to a data rate
of 150MB/s) and migrating to 3.0 gigabits per second (300 MB/s), then to 6.0 gigabits per
second (600 MB/s). This roadmap supports up to 10 years of storage evolution, based on
historical trends.
Q6 How does Serial ATA handle backward compatibility issues?
A6 Serial ATA supports legacy drivers for Parallel ATA. OEMs can deploy Serial ATA, today,
using existing parallel ATA drivers. Vendors intend to supply bridges for parallel-to-serial
conversion for legacy devices.
Q7 Are there any known interoperability issues with Serial ATA?
A7 One of the primary requirements of the Serial ATA 1.0 specification was to maintain
backward compatibility with existing operating system drivers to eliminate incompatibility
issues.
Q8 How will operating systems handle Serial ATA?
A8 Because of the legacy support inherent in the specification, operating support will be
simplified. The Serial ATA specification allows for additional features to be added to
applications. Additional features will be subject to normal driver validation processes.
Q9 How does the end-user benefit from using Serial ATA technology in servers and
NAS?
A9 The end-user will benefit from lower cost, higher performance (via increased speed and
scalability), and easier configuration. Serial ATA allows for higher performance while using
existing, proven features such as 3.5" disk drives. Configuration of Serial ATA devices will
eliminate many of today's requirements for jumpers and settings.
Q10 How does the system vendor benefit from using Serial ATA technology in servers
and NAS?
A10 Benefits for the OEM:
 • Easier configuration and design with cables that are thinner, have smaller
connectors, and are simpler to route and install
• Ability to use HDD technology across multiple segments such as desktops, entry
and midrange servers, and networked storage
• Easier training for Sales and Tech Support staff
• Improved silicon design with lower voltage that will ease current design
requirements in Parallel ATA

Compatibility with today's software that will enable Serial ATA to run on the new
architecture without modification
Q11 How can I get more information?
A11 More information can be obtained at this Web site and the Serial ATA Working Group
official web site.
Q12 What is Intel's role in Serial ATA and storage?
A12 Intel® has been a leading force, and it is one of over 80 companies driving the Serial ATA
initiative to enable low cost, high-performance, next-generation disk interconnects. As a
leading supplier of storage building blocks, including Intel® Architecture processors,
motherboards, I/O processors, ethernet NICs, RAID controllers, and iSCSI HBAs, Intel®
sees Serial ATA as a critical technology for next-generation storage platforms.

Serial ATA - The Future Interface for High Performance and Mainstream Desktop PCs

Most desktop storage systems today use a parallel bus interface referred to as Ultra ATA/100. The parallel ATA
interface has been in use on desktop systems as the mainstream internal storage inter-connect, since the 1980's
(over 15 years!). Today's PCs demand higher speeds, more robust data integrity and flexibility for innovative
smaller designs. Physically and electrically, the current parallel bus has run into limitations that will prevent this
bus from providing higher speeds of data transfers. The move to a new technology is inevitable in the eyes of
industry leaders such as Intel, Dell, Seagate, Maxtor and APT.

These same leaders formed the SerialATA.org and are highly dedicated to bringing this new
technology to the forefront of today's PCs. Serial ATA is designed to overcome the limitations
of parallel ATA while providing scalability for years to come. Setting the goal to be compatible
and at cost parity with current parallel ATA drives when in volume, the SerialATA organization
is promoting the adoption of Serial ATA in all systems where ATA drives are being used today.

What is Serial ATA?

Serial ATA is a "serial" architecture as opposed to today's "parallel" ATA internal disc drive bus.
Serial ATA wraps many bits of data into a packet and then at a higher speed (up to 50%
higher) than parallel, transfers the packet of data down the wire to or from the host. Today
Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) is performed on the data being transmitted back and forth
but not on the commands. Serial ATA integrates CRC on the command and data packet level
for enhanced bus reliability. Cyclic redundancy code detects all single and double-bit errors
and ensures detection of 99.998% of all possible errors. A Serial ATA drive can transfer data at
150MB/sec on the bus to the host system with extremely reliable accuracy and the Serial ATA
interface will continue to allow scalability for a very long time.

Serial ATA provides expansion for reliable performance growth

Generation 1 Generation 2 Generation 3

Approximate
150 MB/sec 300MB/sec 600MB/sec
Data Rate

Approximate
1.5GB/sec 3GB/sec 6GB/sec
Bus Speed
Approximate
Fall of '02 Mid'04 Mid'07
Introduction

Additional Benefits
In addition to a faster, more reliable bus, Serial ATA improves cabling and connectors for a
robust yet simpler integration. Gone are the days of bent pins and clumsy cabling and
needless returned hard drives. Serial ATA cables are thinner and longer for improved system
airflow and innovative system designs such as small form factor and consumer electronic
boxes. Connectors are easier to snap into place without any pins but rather a blind-mate type
of connection. Without the wide cables, system integrators can easily route the longer data
cables (1 meter) within the system for simplicity or innovative designs.

Seagate Technology, A Native in Serial ATA

Still in its early market entry stage, Serial ATA provides immediate benefits to desktop users.
Serial ATA, an innovative new interface, allows continued performance growth, enhanced data
reliability, and overall improved system dynamics above and beyond what Parallel can
efficiently continue to provide.

A true "Native" Serial ATA solution offers customers the "Real McCoy" in Serial ATA technology.
By implementing Serial ATA technology, not only on the physical layer of the drive, but also in
the ATA controller link and transport layers, Seagate drives can communicate from the drive to
the host directly up to the full 150MB/sec speed on the bus. In addition, the native solution
incorporates command queueing, which can be a big performance boost in operating systems
that can take advantage of that type of function. Some drive manufacturers may not
immediately offer these "native" Serial ATA features on their 1st generation Serial ATA drives
due to the difficulty of this integration.

Native Serial ATA = 150MB/sec bus speed, command queueing support, super-set
feature ready (first party DMA) -A True Serial ATA Controller, Not Just A Translator.

There is another way to quickly integrate Serial ATA onto a drive and it's referred to as a
"bridge" solution. In a bridged solution, the drive manufacturer inserts a data serializer/de-
serializer function before the data is sent or received by the on board ATA controller. Data on a
bridged SATA solution can only be sent or received as fast as the ATA controller works. Since
the serial functionality is not natively tied to the drive controller link and transport layers but
rather a separate function that translates data for a parallel controller, it can only transfer at
that speed (100 or 133MB/sec).

The industry is more than ready to adopt Serial ATA technology and Seagate is proud to offer
their customers a high performance "true native" Serial ATA solution. Look for controller cards
and drives in the Fall of 2002 and motherboards with Serial ATA ports integrated in mid 2003.