The Serial ATA International Organization—a.k.a. SATA-IO, the body that oversees the development of the SATA standard—has been busy. Earlier today, the group announced that its SATA 3.1 specification is now available for download. Members can grab the spec for free, while everyone else will have to cough up a "nominal fee" for the privilege.
Highlights of the 3.1 spec include new power-saving measures, TRIM performance improvements for solid-state drives, and miscellaneous tweaks. In the words of the SATA-IO press release…
- mSATA – SATA for mobile computing devices, now with enhanced auto detection to provide increased interoperability by eliminating the need for a dedicated mSATA connector
- Zero-Power Optical Disk Drive (ODD) – eliminates the power consumption of an idle SATA ODD, resulting in increased energy savings
- Required Link Power Management – drives energy efficient power management across all SATA devices, reducing overall system power demand
- Queued Trim Command – allows SATA SSDs to execute Trim without impacting normal operation, improving SSD performance
- Hardware Control Features – enable host identification of device capabilities, allowing hosts to make more effective use of SATA devices
Another noteworthy addition is the inclusion of "completed [design] requirements" for SATA Universal Storage Module (USM), a standard for swappable SATA drive modules that can fit into a wide range of devices, from TVs and consoles to PCs and drive docking stations. SATA-IO announced USM in January, and Seagate’s GoFlex hard drives already support it. Some other device makers, including Thermaltake with its V9 BlacX Flex Edition enclosure, have also embraced the standard.
That sucks that your wife controls all your purchasing decisions good luck with that.
Not really a funny joke but I got the reference from your first post.
Everyone’s too serious.
It’s a press release, so you aren’t going to get the technical details. It’s not supposed to be clear and well-defined. That’s what you (pay to) get the spec for.
That’s usually best. Teh Intraweb has trouble with subtle.
Hence why I said technically. 😛 I was being facetious. TRIM doesn’t actually erase things though, it just lets the controller know where the “deleted” blocks within the filesystem are. Depending on the controller implementation that will either do nothing (until the next write needs space) or it will trigger a “defragmentation” of the free space on the drive…which technically does use up cycles. 🙂
I should just stop trying to be mildly funny and either shoot straight to the absurd or be completely dry.
So how exactly is this implemented? For example, to automatically power off a DVD drive, do you need a SATA 3.1 drive connected to a SATA 3.1 controller? Or do you just install a driver update for any old SATA 6gbps controller to make it able to do these things with any connected SATA device? This is as clear as mud.
Not necessarily. They all need pretty capable “garbage collection” of their own so they don’t screw up all those RAID arrays in servers that they’re actually meant for.
Most of us old timers will say “IDE” instead, though I normally write it PATA now.
“SATA” like [b<]Sat[/b<] (as in sat down on a chair) [b<]aah[/b<] (as in "Aah!")
They made such a big stink over “oh, it’s not SATA 3! It’s SATA 6gbps!” and now they’re releasing a spec called 3.1… >.>”
good, i’m happy to hear that. I’d like to pick one up, but evil wife says no : (
no question. seems i over estimated this crowds ability to remember posts from like 2 days ago….
Thanks for the clarfication.
I thought from the news blurb’s description that mSATA was an attempt to make eSATA more viable.
SATA: Serial ATA -> S Ay Tee Ay, SAYTA (although SATTAH is actually what I say, because I used to say PATTAH for PATA, not PAYTA or PARTA.) SARTA is obviously wrong but I imagine some people use that. It probably comes down to regional accents and common ‘A’ phoneme sound in that accent.
Data: DAYTA (as in Star Trek). Have heard DATTAH and DARTA though.
You’re right, though technically, TRIM doesn’t erase anything. It just informs the drive firmware that blocks it would otherwise be working to conserve are actually considered deleted by the file system and therefore can be included in the list of free blocks available for future use. The controller will (probably) get around to erasing them eventually, but there’s no requirement it do so. And in fact, since this makes more total blocks available, the net effect is probably to reduce total erases slightly (especially when the drive is close to being full) because there will be less need for shuffling and consolidation of partially-full blocks.
mSATA is a PCIe-style edge connector that supports SATA signalling, to enable things like Intel’s Larson Creek and to allow notebooks/tablets to squeeze in a small SSD for cache/boot without using up the HD bay. Unless you think USB 3 and/or Thunderbolt are going to be used for internal connections, there’s little overlap with the external HD market.
I just say “S-A-T-A”
SATA or Serial ATA, is how I do it.
mSATA = too little, too late. USB 3 and soon LP/TB have taken over the external HDD market.
Otherwise, it looks like SATA 3.1 is a just an energy-effiicent verson of SATA3.
For consistency you should be pronouncing PATA in the same way, but then you risk sounding like you are cussing the thing
Haven’t had that issue with two separate 320 drives that I’ve been using regularly now brother 🙂
No, it doesn’t.
TRIM erases data preemptively yes, but no matter what, the drive does this before it writes to the flash again.
Which is how I pronounce it, and why I do it that way.
That depends on how you pronounce data. I’ve heard SATA pronounced like “Data” from Star Trek.
Is SATA pronounced like data?
Technically TRIM reduces the life of your SSD as well.
Can we expect Intel’s upcoming 7-Series chipsets to support this?
If you have to explain the joke, it probably wasn’t funny.
i was referring to intel’s 320 series….
would like to see some performance tests 🙂
disable TRIM in your OS, but then your SSD will run slower as it fills and reduces it’s life.
awesome! improved trim! can they make it stop deleting data all the time though?