Perhaps SATA rev3 can ladle up data faster than we expect it to.

Xavoc

I don't get SATA. Isn't SATA 2 faster than any hard drive can go? isn't plain old SATA the same? Hard drives can't keep up? So what is the point? Even if a blu ray burner would benefit, say, it would still be slowed down by the HD. Unless your burning BD-BD, which seems like a pretty small market. The only other use I could think of was computer to computer, but thats what fibrechannel is for. Unless this revision makes it actually worth it since fibrechannel is 4 GB/s vs this is 6 GB/s. Any other ideas?

moo083

So, basically, this will make my Vista machine bluescreen faster?

Xavoc

One more part going into my Starcraft II machine. Is that Intel 32core processor ready yet.

reddingofish

Also,,, The cable connectors will be 6 wires to 6 connections which relay to 6 other components, thus giving more speed. This configuration is known as the 666 configuration....

aliskaba

Really, to be faster they should abbreviate the name to just "S", or add "extreme" or "ex", or something to it, or maybe the SATA with a line through it like a racing stripe.

DeadWriter

I just hope they make SATA power connectors way more durable. I've had so many break apart when working in small cases. They're so flimsy that it's just mind-boggling.

DisposableInterloper

As long as they are still writing to and from mechanical hard drives its going to be slow. Now as for the raptors or RAID setups this will be great. Other than that lets just hope for some super fast SSDs that are also easy on the pocket book.

Elijah86

SATA version 3 will add an N to the abbreviation SATA making it SATAN. This is why it will go faster.

aliskaba

1 more step on my way to world domination.

dsenier

"...it's just too bad there's not a hard drive on the market that can read or write at 6 Gbps."

Ah yes. Such has been true since the dawn of time. The bus is always several generations ahead of the actual hardware. Blast!

Bluesk1d

@Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish: Considering that it looks like they used MS paint for the diagram that should be easy to do.

Mr.SithNinja

I say Speed Holes damnit!

MagnoliaBoy

@Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish: I agree. They should give it wheels or something... I dont know!

Just stick with the painted flames.

Evangelion

Being faster, OK, I can buy that, but looking faster? No, it's going to need flames painted on it.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

@aliskaba: @aliskaba:

All the more reason to use flames to make it look faster.

whootowl

@moo083: Yeah let's stop development right now. No point in continuing to push performance. Now, where's my 637kb stick of memory.

BoinK

They should add some K&N stickers maybe a Neuspeed one as well. I hear each sticker adds 5HP or 5MB

vertigo

Speed more speed! Although fiber optics is what i really want to see. I do enjoy that the transfer rate of the new SATA 3 is faster than any drive available....although didn't WD talk about a 20,000rpm HD? That might be close....

SgtToastie

Does anyone know how this affects SAS? I know that SAS was supposed to be bumped to 6Gbps at some time.

token_y_chromosome

Great just when I was getting over motherboards with 1 IDE connector, this crap.

Justapspfan

@DeadWriter: They could throw an R-type emblem on it too, for good measure :D

OUberLord

I realized that saying "SATA" in real life sounds too awkward.

ripfire

The fastest upcoming SSD drives are already getting close to the current SATA 3 Gbps theoretical limit. 3 Gbps actually works out to be 384 MBps, minus protocol overhead and what-not.

The latest Micron SSD is supposedly good for 250 MBps read speeds; give it another generation or two and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see SSDs being bottlenecked by a SATA 3 Gbps interface.

HungryMoose

The extra bandwidth is useful, even if individual drives dont go that fast. SATA-II spec has multiplexers which allow multiple drives to connect to a single SATA port. If you plug four drives into a single eSATA port, you might have reason to be thankful for that extra 3Gbps.

@aliskaba: dont worry, only one more iteration till SATA-IV. thats pretty damned close.

rektide

Isn't this the third version of SATA, making it only the second revision?

We can explain away the first version of software in a version control system being called the first revision by pretending that we think of revision numbers as applying to the repository rather than the software within the repository (which is probably not actually true for many people), making the first version a revision from nothing or, more accurately, from emptiness or reserved space. This application of the Most Ancient and Powerful Art of Ri-Ching barely makes sense for software repositories, though; I don't really see how it applies to data cable standards.

Maybe the SATA-IO people spent so much time thinking about their long-winded naming conventions (despite the fact that nobody outside of their organization is likely to remember them let alone actually honor them) that they forgot to have someone look up "revision". Here you go, SATA-IO; this one's on me:

[dictionary.reference.com]
[www.merriam-webster.com]

Or did I miss some third version of the standard somewhere, making this the fourth version and the third revision?

Brian Sexton

@HungryMoose - SATA"2" 3Gbps translates to 300MB/s if you take the overhead into account. Which is still quite a bit more then the fastest HDD's and SSD's (that I know about). Current models are about as fast thas the maximum that SATA1 could reach; 150MB/s

Knirfie

Yes, I second the request to get rid of those crappy plugs - they break far too easily and are slack to begin with. Pathetic in fact.

VAR1016