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Serial ATA

Serial ATA is a new method of transferring the data from the HD and CDROm drives to the motherbaord. instead of using a nice fat ribbon, it uses 4 wires. it sends the data as fast, by having a REALLY high clock rate.

initially it will offer about 1 gigabit/second overall transfer rate (I think overall, I can't remember).

it doesn't have channels or anything like that, so you can have MANY MORE devices per controller chip.

it was also claimed that it doesn't therefor have to time share devices (ie if 2 IDE drives want to send data at a time, the controller allows 1, then the other, alternating in equal time lengths, to have the entire bandwidth to itself), so many devices can send data at a time, and therefor get closer to the maximum theoretical transfer rate of the whole design (with normal IDE tech, if the drive cannot fill the full bandwidth (say 100megs), that extra bandwidth cannot be used because it time share's, rather then bandwidth share).

it was also claimed to have lower CPU utilization then normal IDE, though I'd have to see that to believe it, becuase all 3 current ATA specs (33, 66, 100) claimed that, and didn't really reduce CPU time much at all (if at all).

if you want all that right NOW, the closest you can get is SCSI, which has EVERYTHING like I mentioned above, EXCEPT it still uses ribbons.
 
SerialATA = We'll make it run X times as fast in clock rate as the current tech, but in order to do so, we'll have to reduce the bus width.

Rambus = We'll make it run 4 times as fast in clock rate as the current tech, but in order to do so we'll have to reduce the bus width.
 
lord evermore, it's not about increasing bandwidth overall per se..

it's about increasing the efficiency of the USE of bandwidth (read my above post) and the decreasing CPU time, as well as increasing the amount of devices that will be able to run on one controller.

don't be against serial technology because RAMBUS tried (and miserably failed) to use it to it's own end. there is only so much you can parallelize things. if you can increase the bits/second that each wire provides by rates such as these, if you apply parallel technology later on with new serial technology, you could get MUCH MORE bandwidth then original.

it's just one step up the evolution ladder of computers. I won't get into specifics about RAMBUS..

as for the latest ETA, I don't have a CLUE! but it should be out sometime next year (hey they aren't going to release any more ribbon based IDE spec's (faster then ATA 100, which was just released). I suspect therefor that if the same period exists between ATA upgrades, it will be pretty soon.
 
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