SATA Gets Boosted with Revision 2.6

It's been a while since the SATA standard got any significant new features and improvements. The Serial ATA International Organization understood the need for a revision, just recently announcing the latest Serial ATA specification (revision 2.6). These add new physical and performance features to the previous SATA revision 2.5, also referred to as SATA 3.0Gbps, released some two years ago.

The most important physical features added to the SATA revision 2.6 include internal cable specifications for small-form-factor systems and mobile PC applications, which specify a new internal slim-line cable and connector. Dubbed Slimline, the new cable-connector assembly targets optical drives included in tightly packed small-form-factor systems.

SATA-IO also defines a new standard which comes in the form of an internal micro SATA connector, intended for ultra mobile PCs. This new internal micro SATA connector is included to support the latest 1.8" hard drives.

Additionally, SATA-IO provides specifications for a new mini SATA multilane cable and connector, which is intended for the use of internal backplane designs and external eSATA or xSATA protocols. However, mini SATA multilane connectors are not supposed to be compatible with consumer desktop PCs.

Revision 2.6 also introduces new performance improvements to the SATA specification. The Native Command Queuing standard (NCQ) is upgraded to deliver significant speed boosts for desktop and notebook systems. In this sense, a new NCQ priority enhancement feature prioritizes data during complex workloads. For mobile HDDs, there is a new NCQ unload enhancement feature, which increases mobile SATA hard drive robustness, especially in drop-prone environments.