Future Hard Drives Technology
With the upcoming ATA/133 standard pushing the limits of the maximum
transfer rates supported by the Parallel ATA interface, the next step
to revolutionize hard disk interfaces will be Serial ATA. It offers
greater speed, easier fabrication and application. Find, compare and
buy Hard Drives!
The Serial ATA interface is to ATA what FireWire is to SCSI. The entire
approach is to convert the parallel standard that is used by existing
ATA interfaces to a serial format (where one bit is transferred at a
time) so that higher data transfer frequencies can be supported. Also,
this approach greatly simplifies the fabrication of cables and
connecting wires that are used by the interface, since there are fewer
signals to deal with, facilitating a less cluttered cabinet.
This translates into easier airflow within the system and
subsequently more efficient cooling. In fact. Serial ATA uses just four
signal pins (there are a total of seven pins; the others are used for
transmitting overhead commands) that actually carry the data and
include the power and ground pins. This is significantly lower than the
80 lines that are used in today's ATA/100 and ATA/133 cables. This
standard will support transfer rates of up to 150 MBps.
Also,
since this is a point-to-point protocol, there will be no place for
master and slave devices on a single cable—and bandwidth will not need
to be shared between devices. Another big advantage with this standard
is that it is backward compatible with the existing parallel ATA
standard at the driver level. Therefore, all existing applications that
use the parallel ATA standard can be fully extended to support serial
ATA.
The Next Generation Hard drive for the Primary Storage
Emerging technology plays a big role in today's business. Peripherals
like motherboards, processors and other system components are getting
faster and demand much more bandwidth from internal and external
interfaces. The world of hard drive manufacturers is changing and the
demand for storage is also on the rise.
Welcome to
the next generation revolution in hard disk interface, the Serial ATA,
popularly known as SATA. SATA is one such standard that will be hitting
the internal interface industry with a big bang.
Future Hard drive technology - SATA
Seven key industries worked together to develop a working group for
Serial ATA in February 2000 and named it the SATA workgroup. The
promoters were: APT Technologies, Dell Computers, IBM, Intel, Maxtor
Corporation, Quantum Corporation, and Seagate Technologies. Of these,
Intel
has been the leading player on the host side, with Maxtor taking a key
role on the device side. By December 2000, there were more than 70
contributing companies covering the disciplines required to enable this
technology.
Serial ATA interface helps transfer data at a speed of 150 MBps with
ease and is moving on to pick up speeds of up to 300 MBps by 2005 and
600 MBps by 2010.
This interface is completely different from parallel ATA interface. The
serial ATA interface is small thin cable with 7 connector as against a
normal 40- or 80-pin cable, which translates to a complete reduction in
the number of jumbled up wires within the cabinet.
One such formation of eight companies, including some of the
largest names in Japan's electronics industry, have formed a consortium
to promote and license a new removable hard disk system for use in
personal computers and consumer electronics devices.
Future Hard drive technology Group
The IVDR, or Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage consortium,
was established by Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Phoenix Technologies,
Pioneer, Sanyo Electric, Sharp, and Victor of Japan, along with support
from electronics connector maker FCI Japan and computer peripherals
maker Mitsumi Electric.
IVDR disks are little more than conventional 2.5 inch hard
disk drives of the type commonly found in notebook computers, and
increasingly in consumer electronics products such as digital video
recorders and some digital music players. To the conventional drive,
the consortium members have added a new connector, better suited to
such a removable system, and also a plastic case to protect the drive.
Led by Sanyo, which first considered such a system two years
ago, the consortium members began discussing removable hard disk drives
as a solution to an ever more common problem: as hard disk drive
technology continues increasing, maximum drive capacity is roughly
doubling each year which means that consumers who buy a product
designed to last several years will very soon be left behind by drive
technology.
As for cost, the group expects IVDR drives to retail for
around 10 or 20 per cent more than a PC hard disk drive.
The highest capacity 2.5 inch hard disk drives available now, at around
60 GB, already have six times the capacity of double-sided DVD-RAM
disks and exceed the capacity of the Blu-ray optical disk format.
Blu-ray was proposed in February by some of the same companies, but is
not expected in the stores for at least a year. Cost and reliability
are two major factors, which will decide the next generation hard drive
technology. Let us wait and check which hard disk technology emerges as
leader.
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