AMD, Seagate Show Off 6-Gbits/s SATA

AMD and Seagate will demonstrate a next-generation 6-Gbit/s SATA interface Monday in New Orleans, the companies said. Neither company is announcing products based on the technology yet, Seagate executives said.

The 6-Gbit/s SATA technology will be part of a future AMD south bridge chip, and may appear in solid-state-disc drives before it becomes part of a conventional hard drive.

The target markets will be gaming PCs and servers, executives said.

Currently, SATA uses a 3.0-Gbit/s interface, which should satisfy the throughput requirements of hard drives until 2011, when that channel will become saturated and the 6.0-Gbit/s interface will truly be needed.

But the SATA-IO Working Group and the industry has traditionally built in enough overhead into the interface to allow the industry time to prepare, said Marc Noblitt, senior marketing I/O development manager for Seagate. (extremetech)