TABLE OF CONTENTS Although Serial ATA was originally designed to replace parallel ATA in PCs, it has characteristics that make it very attractive for use beyond just the desktop. Let s examine how Serial ATA features and characteristics meet requirements for laptop, server, and Storage Appliance products.
In excess of 200 million PCs are sold each year. For PCs, typical purchase criteria for storage can be summarized as: adequate capacity, reasonable performance, and reasonable reliability supported with a warranty. Hard disk drive vendors have been able to take those simple requirements, apply some incredibly innovative improvements, and squeeze every penny in pursuit of the high-volume desktop market.
This chapter looks at the applicability of desktop Serial ATA devices for laptops, servers, and storage appliances. For laptops, Serial ATA ingredients and products developed for desktops will find a home driven by requirements for smaller form factors and higher integration. For servers and storage appliances, desktop technologies and manufacturing economies of scale make Serial ATA attractive for price-sensitive server and storage appliance products. But, as no single tool is right for every job, some applications requirements for higher multi-user performance and system reliability outweigh differences in price. Although the Serial ATA interface does not dictate the performance and reliability characteristics of device implementations, and Serial ATA products intended specifically for server applications are anticipated, much of the interest in utilizing Serial ATA devices in server applications stems from the economies of scale afforded by utilizing mainstream desktop storage ingredients. This chapter, therefore, focuses on the...
