The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the storage industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of the Serial ATA (SATA) technology, today announced the publication of the SATA Revision 3.5 Specification. Specification 3.5 introduces features that enable increased performance benefits and promote greater integration of SATA devices and products with other industry I/O standards.
As storage technologies continue to advance, the industry continues to demand improvements in performance, reliability and compatibility. To ensure that members and the industry continue to have a reliable storage solution, the SATA-IO has added new features to the ubiquitous specification that offer improvements in a number of areas including:
- Device Transmit Emphasis for Gen 3 PHY: aligns SATA with other characteristics of other I/O measurement solutions to help SATA-IO members with testing and integration.
- Defined Ordered NCQ Commands: allows the host to specify the processing relationships among queued commands and sets the order in which commands are processed in the queue.
- Command Duration Limit Features: reduces latency by allowing the host to define quality of service categories, giving the host more granularity in controlling command properties. The feature helps align SATA with the "Fast Fail" requirements established by the Open Compute Project (OCP) and specified in the INCITS T13 Technical Committee standard.
In addition, Specification 3.5 incorporates all of the latest T13 standard updates to give implementors the latest requirements for drives and other products and includes miscellaneous corrections and clarifications from the previous SATA 3.4 specification.
“SATA-IO has a long tradition of participating in the industry and supporting new innovative technology. These new features underscore the versatility of the SATA standard,” said Jim Hatfield, SATA-IO president. “SATA remains one of the most stable, yet adaptable, interfaces in the industry. We are pleased to be able to enhance SATA’s compatibility benefits for our members and the industry by adding features which allow SATA and other I/O standards to coexist in a variety of environments.”
The specification is available to SATA-IO members for free, while non-members can purchase the specification by visiting www.sata-io.org.
