SATA-IO Expands Supported Features in Revision 3.4 Spec

The SATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the storage industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of the SATA technology, announced the publication of the SATA Revision 3.4 specification.

This SATA specification introduces features that enable monitoring of device conditions and execution of housekeeping tasks, both with minimal impact on performance.

The storage market continues to demand improvements in performance, reliability and compatibility. The industry standard group has added new features to the specification revision 3.4 so that SATA devices may offer improvements in these areas, including:

• Durable/ordered write notification: Enables writing selected critical cache data to the media, minimizing impact on normal operations.

• Device temperature monitoring: Allows for active monitoring of SATA device temperature and other conditions without ipacting normal operation by utilizing the SFF-8609 standard for out of band (OOB) communications.

• Device sleep signal timing: Provides additional definition to enhance compatibility between manufacturers’ implementations.

In addition, the latest revision of the specification includes corrections and clarifications as part of ongoing improvements to the SATA specification.

“SATA remains the highest volume storage interface in the industry and SATA-IO continues to improve the specification for the benefit of SATA developers and users,” said Jim Hatfield, president, SATA-IO. “The features provided in revision 3.4 deliver the improvements in SATA’s performance, reliability and compatibility that our members and the industry expect.“

The specification is available to SATA-IO members for free, while non-members can purchase the specification by visiting this web site.