SCSI Trade Association Unveils Updated SAS Roadmap

Highlighting continued innovation and increased performance in the SCSI storage interface protocol, the SCSI Trade Association (STA) unveiled its latest SAS technology roadmaps at the fifteenth annual Storage Visions Conference in Las Vegas, NE.

SAS roadmap

Showing the availability of prototypes and end-user products for each generation of SAS, the roadmaps include a schedule for the next generation 24Gb SAS, SAS external and internal cabling solutions and a look at SAS device-to-mid-plane interconnects.

The updated SAS technology roadmaps can be downloaded and viewed with notes.

“For storage professionals seeking fast, flexible and reliable data access, SAS continues to be the proven platform for innovation,” said Rick Kutcipal, president, STA and product planning, data center storage group, Avago Technologies Ltd. “As evident in these robust roadmaps, SAS provides superior enterprise system performance, connectivity and scalability.“

In a storage visions conference panel presentation on January 5 titled Keeping it Now: Emerging Storage Technologies, Cameron Brett, STA board member and director of enterprise SSD marketing at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., discussed the latest innovations in 12Gb SAS including:

• More efficient use of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) with the new Zoned Block Command feature for increased density in HDDs
• Support for the U.2 initiative through the SFF-8639 connector
• The MultiLink SAS architecture, a slot-compatible implementation that takes advantage of the increasing performance of SSDs in standard form factors as well as support for existing HDDs
• The Storage Intelligence feature that optimizes SSD applications, boosts storage system performance and increases the endurance of SSDs
  

During his presentation at Storage Visions, Brett provided attendees an overview of 24Gb SAS objectives that double the bandwidth of 12Gb SAS, support two generations of backward compatibility and preserve the existing SAS value proposition. 24Gb SAS commercial devices are expected in the marketplace in 2018.

“The demand for digital data creation and consumption is growing every year and this growth in content capacity requires not just more storage devices but faster interfaces to move that data around to where it is needed,” said Tom Coughlin, founder of Coughlin Associates and Storage Visions Conference chairperson. “The SCSI Trade Association is showing further innovations in the SAS storage interface that will support the growth in enterprise storage applications.“