|
contents | business | |||||||
| STA Announces 6Gb/s SAS The SCSI Trade Association (STA) announces that the next generation of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is ready to enter the enterprise storage market after five years of research and development. 6Gb/s SAS is the marketing name for the new technology, in contrast to the name of the standard specification, SAS–2, designated by T10. The SAS–2 specification describes the features and capabilities for 6Gb/s SAS products and STA defines 6Gb/s SAS as a required set of features. The T10 Technical Committee is under the direction of the InterNational Committee for Information and Technology Standards (INCITS). The 6Gb/s SAS generation was designed to maintain backward compatibility with 3Gb/s SAS, as well as with 1.5Gb/s and 3Gb/s SATA, allowing these technologies to operate in the same system. As a result, SAS-based systems can support both SAS and SATA HDDs, providing a storage capability that operates seamlessly with greater speed and capacity than any storage system to date. 6Gb/s SAS product features include: - Throughput doubled from 3Gb/s to 6Gb/s; - Standardized expander zoning for increased security; - Expander self-discovery speeds up the device discovery process during power-up; - Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) reduces electromagnetic interference; - Mini-SAS cabling is required for external cabling (SFF-8088 and SFF-8087), easing cabling decisions. Additional performance enhancements to 6Gb/s SAS which contribute to superior internal and external storage system configurations include wide ports, dual-port drives and full-duplex data transmission. Cables have lengthened to ten meters as opposed to six meters used for 3Gb/s SAS. 6Gb/s SAS protects investment in storage systems, as additions can be made as needed to the existing SAS system no matter the size or configuration. In addition, PCI Express, Gen. 2, has been increasingly associated with 6Gb/s SAS system configurations as the two technologies are highly compatible and complementary in building large, powerful storage systems. The first plugfest to be devoted entirely to 6Gb/s SAS will be held the week of Nov. 10 at the University of New Hampshire IOLab facility. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Networking News :: home page |