A Brief Introduction To SATA Express Cable

SATA is a bus technology and one of the interfaces of SSD which was designed for faster interface required by the hard drive, which is the hassle-free transfer of information/data to and from a computer hard drive. One of the advantages of Serial ATA is its simplicity- one cable consisting of a minimum of four wires, allowing for a connection in a point to point configuration between the devices.

Benefits of SATA cable as compared to PATA

It is known to replace the Parallel ATA that is one of the IDE standards for connecting storage devices inside of a computer. Though Serial ATA can transmit data to and from the rest of the computer much faster than otherwise similar to the PATA device, the speed of SATA still needs to be improved.

When it comes to affordability, Serial ATA as compared to Parallel ATA has the benefit of cheaper cable costs and the ability to hot-swap the devices. The term hot swap means that the devices can be replaced without turning off the entire system. On the other hand, with PATA, you have to shut off the computer before replacing the hard drive.

SATA cables are smaller compared to the PATA ribbon cables which adds to the benefits as it is easier to manage because these don’t take up as much space and can be tied more easily. Moreover, the updated SATA Express cables come with a thinner design which also results in better airflow inside the computer case.

SATA Revision

As of 2013, SATA Express or SATA Express cables were defined within the SATA v3.2 specification. This was done after evaluating many methods that were used to increase the speed, the designers of SATA were in a constant lookout for expanding the SATA interface that would double the speed of the SATA to 12Gb/s but at the end, they knew that it would take more than two years. Therefore, it was not at all suitable to catch up with advancements in SSD technology.

The First Revision of SATA

SATA revision 3.0 was released in May 2009 with a draft specification of 6Gb/s. This runs with a native transfer rate of 6.0Gb/s and provides the maximum encoding rate of 4.8 Gb/s.

Second Revision

SATA revision 3.1 was released in July 2011, with changed features, the main change was mSATA, SATA for solid-state drives in mobile computing systems as well as a PCI Express mini card like connector.

SATA Revision 3.2

The SATA III, back in the days allowed for up to 6Gbps but as the SATA Express has taken its place, this has become the new standard. SATA express cables, released in 2013, are not a new common or signaling protocol but these are merely a specification for a connector that supports serial ATA and PCIe signals simultaneously into one simple connector. Basically, this means that if you plug in a SATA device that you will be using just SATA, and if you plug in a PCIe device you will be running through only PCIe. The cable supports SATA ports and PCIe lanes and a separate signal is produced by the drive which ensures that the host knows if they are connected to a SATA or PCIe. As a result, when it comes to this version of SATA, it is fully compatible with all existing SATA drives and cables. The only difference is that the connector can be easily attached to PCIe SSDs.

While the designers were expanding the SATA specification, they provided a PCI Express interface that was also provided in the same backward compatible connector. It supports PCI Express and SATA storage devices, moreover, the SATA express exposes two PCI Express lanes and two SATA ports through the same host-side.

If users use two PCI express 2.0 lanes at the same time it can provide a total bandwidth of 1000Mb/s and with PCI 3.0 lanes it can provide 1969Mb/s.

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Created on Sep 25th 2020 06:42. Viewed 1,102 times.

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