We are stuck with SATA 3 for another year (Sigh)

Source: Intel 9-series Chipset Could Feature SATA Express Interface | techPowerUp

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Intel 7-series chipset (Panther Point) is the chipset we are using today that supports Ivy Bridge. It features two SATA 3 ports and four SATA 2 ports.

Intel 8-series chipset (Lynx Point) is the new one for the upcoming Haswell processors. It features only SATA 3 ports, up to 6 ports to be precise.

Intel 9-series chipset is what will come with the new SATA Express ports. No information about how many SATA Express ports it will have, or how many SATA 3 ports it will feature. This chipset is rumored to come in Q2 2014, and may support both Haswell and Broadwell processors, although the timing seems to suggest it will be made for Broadwell processors (the ones replacing Haswell).

For those who don`t know, SATA 2 supports up to 3Gb/s (300MB/s), SATA 3 up to 6Gb/s (600MB/s) and SATA Express up to 16Gb/s (2GB/s).

 

W/ 8-series chipset, a big plus is that mSATA boot SSD can now easily be on a SATA III capable connection. Meaning that many recent mSATA SSD devices are already SATA III capable but the mobo connection (w/ Intel 7-series chipset (Panther Point)) was limited to SATA II.

Good info, thanks!

Sorry to snip the lead-in text and pic. NBR plays games when one (i.e. me) uses the "snip" word at the start!

 

Like my GT70. All SATA3 connections was only for the mSATA Raid0 card. The other slot for normal drives was left with SATA 2. Now all ports is SATA3. So yeah, thats good. Although I want SATA Express NOW, not wait another year for exciting new SSDs with better specs. I bet the SSD manufacturers are already ready with 1000MB/s SSDs but they can`t be used because of the stupid SATA3 port is holding them down.

Just look at the Crucial M4. It came out in April 2011. Now take a look at the fastest drives from 2013. Few seconds faster maybe. All because SATA3 was saturated ages ago. Man these guys who make the SATA Express specifications and allow it in to the market sure are working sloooow.

 

Just a hunch on my part, but...

It may be that the necessary support chips aren't ready yet?

It's also not clear to me if SATA-Express might perhaps show up on desktop mobo's 1st, because they have more square inches of area than the much smaller laptop/tablet mobo's; meaning that electrical interference might well be a possible issue.

The ref you provided in your OP (i.e. the wording within the writeup) made it clear that it is more of a very early comment and not a review.

 

I think the mSATA being SATA II in some notebooks was because of the manufacturer making that choice in design.

The Series 7 chipsets support 2 SATA III connections.

MSI,in their GE60 and GE70,made the mSATA Slot and the 2.5"SATA bay both SATA III 6GB/s

 

In my GT70 the Sata III ports are on both mSATA slots, the 2.5 sata slot is SataII so is the Optical.

 

Notebooks will have it too. Read more about it here:
http://www.sata-io.org/documents/SATA%20Express%20-%20SV%202013.pdf

 

Another great high-level reference.

I found the info on pp 8, 9, & 10 most interesting.

FWIW I wasn't aware of this from page 8: "But AHCI is not optimized for SSD performance"

 

SATA III is plenty fast. Work on bringing the cost down to < $0.25/GB.

 

AHCI is optimized for SSD's (on a SATA based connection) - but not when using the SATA Express register/interface command set. With a proper/full SATA Express connection (M.2 or SFF-8639), NVMe will offer the higher performance (but will not provide SATA software compatibility).

 

What I'd like to know is why the industry is even going along with SATA Express. Given the performance characteristics of SSDs, isn't it high time we moved away from the consumer HDD oriented half-duplex SATA protocol?

 

Nope. Hard drives will still be around for many years to come. And the hybrid HDDs that may be full duplex (not sure, need clarification) are only in their infancy as far as retail models go. For that reason, backwards compatibility with the standard consumer HDD will be a necessity for many more years, or at least until SSD capacity and price catches up HDD's.

 

From a technical perspective, it would be simple to design a full-duplex technology that's fully backwards compatible with legacy SATA drives. I stopped short of naming any specific technology in my previous post, but I was actually thinking of SAS as I wrote it - specifically, how you can plug any SATA drive into a SAS controller.

 

I would think mechanical drives would need some sort of MLC cache to hold data waiting to be read/written as the header on a mechanical drive can only do one at a time? But I may be wrong (probably am, it's been a while since I've studied computer science).

 

Hmm, let me try explaining this in another way, using USB as an analogy...

As you may already know, USB 2.0 is half-duplex, while USB 3.0 is full-duplex. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 in the sense that you can plug a USB 2.0 device into a USB 3.0 port, but that doesn't automatically make the legacy device operate at full-duplex. Only newer devices which are specifically designed for USB 3.0 can take advantage of USB 3.0 features and speeds.

In our case, SATA drives connected to the new drive controller technology (whatever that may be) would continue to operate in half-duplex 6 Gbps SATA mode. Only drives that have specifically been designed for the new technology would run in full-duplex mode.

It's really no different from the SATA 3 Gbps -> SATA 6 Gbps transition - you can plug an Intel X-25M (or any other old SSD) into a SATA 6 Gbps port, but it won't be able to take advantage of the faster speeds.

 

I don't think it's a big deal. Sure, a faster interface would be nice. But how often are you really doing sequential reads/writes where SATA 3 is the bottleneck? This does happen occasionally, but it's not the common bottleneck. And most of the time where it happens, at least for me, a hard drive is involved, so it isn't coming anywhere close to SATA 2 at 3 Gbps Mbps anyway.

I agree with HTWingNut; the much bigger issue for SSDs is price. I'm not buying another one until they're much more economical; I've concluded what I got in 2011 wasn't very good value for the money. What's on it can be accessed fast, but there just aren't enough GBs to make it worth the price.

See also Tom's Hardware on why even with SATA 2, SSDs make sense. The only caveat I'd add is "if they have enough space". But in terms of SATA interfaces, it's a good article on why I see this as a small loss.

 

I know. It's just I can't see the OEMs adopting a new interface when they still have IDE drives refusing to die a horrible death. Maybe in a couple of years *wishful thinking* when IDE is long gone, the OEMs will have a successor to SATA ready to be deployed. I agree, it had just better be full duplex. Here's what I've equated to the current drive data transfer technology:

IDE = CB Radios; short range, not very fast or powerful.

SATA= Next Direct Connect; very fast, very long range, but still only half duplex

The next gen will need to be like our cell phones. Full duplex with backwards compatibility.