Serial ATA Next Step To Faster Drives
"The robustness of the serial ATA protocol will allow this technology to be easily integrated into the enterprise," said Dennis Ball, marketing manager of ExaDrive Networks, a RAID array manufacturer based in Amherst, N.Y. "Add the lower cost due to the economies of scale, and serial ATA should quickly eat market share from SCSI and [Fibre Channel drives."
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>> PRODUCT: Serial ATA drive
>> PRICE: To be determined
>> WARRANTY: 5 years
>> AUTHORIZATION REQUIREMENTS: Must be registered Partner-Force member
>> DISTRIBUTORS/INTEGRATORS: Avnet, Arrow, Ingram Micro, Microland, Tech Data
>> COMPANY: Fujitsu Computer Products of America
San Jose, Calif.
>> PHONE: (408) 432-6333
www.fujitsu.com
Solution providers say migration from the current IDE interface to serial ATA is inevitable.
"Its speed, combined with simpler cabling, hot-pluggability and upcoming generations of speed improvement, will fulfill today's demand from data-intensive and entertainment-heavy PCs," said James Wang, CEO of Aroma Tech, a San Jose, Calif., systems integrator.
"Customers want it; manufacturers are pushing for it. It has features everybody has asked for, so it appears to be a win-win situation," said David Allen, president of Dash, a Kansas City distributor.
Drives offering the new technology are still being developed. Fujitsu has released a prototype 18.5-Gbyte serial ATA drive with a rotational velocity of 4,200 rpm. CRN engineers tested the drive using an Adaptec serial ATA RAID controller card installed in a 1.7GHz-based Windows 2000 system.
Using Iometer, an Intel benchmarking suite that runs an 11-stage script, the drive performed 68 operations per second and achieved maximum throughput of 13 MBps.
"IDE drives have been displacing SCSI in servers and RAID systems more and more, even before serial ATA was on the scene, for reasons of cost and per-spindle capacity," Allen said.