Seagate & AMD Unveil New High Bandwidth HDD SATA Technology 6GB/s Burst, 5.5GB/s Sustained

Seagate and AMD have demonstrated their new high-speed SATA technology
which offers burst data transfer speeds of up to an impressive 6
Gigabits per second and which will be aimed specifically at
bandwidth-hungry desktop and laptop PC applications including gaming,
streaming video and graphics multimedia applications.

The first public demonstration of the new high bandwidth SATA technology
featured a Barracuda 7200 3Gb/second HHD and a new, prototype Barracuda
6Gb/second drive utilising the new high bandwidth technology allowing
the relative performance of both HDDs to be compared. In the consequent
test, whilst the standard 3Gb/second Barracuda managed a sustained data
transfer rate, the prototype Barracuda 6Gb/second drive managed to put
in a sustained 5.5GB/s (the maximum 6GB/s being attainable in burst
transfers only).

The increasing reliance of consumers and businesses worldwide on
digital information is giving rise to gaming, digital video and audio,
streaming video, graphics and other applications that require even more
bandwidth, driving demand for PC interfaces that can carry even more
digital content, said Joan Motsinger, Seagate vice president of
Personal Systems Marketing and Strategy. The SATA 6Gb/second storage
interface will meet this demand for higher-bandwidth PCs. Seagate has a
long history of being first to market with new technologies such as
Serial ATA, perpendicular recording and self-encrypting drives, and is
pleased to be teaming with AMD to stage the world's first public
demonstration of SATA 6Gb/second storage.

There's no word from either AMD or Seagate at this stage detailing quite
when the new high bandwidth SATA technology will become available in
consumer HDD units but, as impressive as the figures are, we cannot help
but wonder quite whether, with the ever growing uptake of SSD units,
this new technology is going to impact negatively (positively for
Seagate) in any way on the inroads being made by solid state drives.
Moreover, certainly as far as laptops/notebooks (and other mobile
computing solutions) are concerned, the HDD as we know it is never going
to offer the durability offered by SSDs - on account of SSDs having now
moving parts, and therefore circumventing wear and tear based drives
failures.

Still we have to have it to AMD and Seagate, as the HDD market is by no
means dead (quite the contrary) and its good to see them coming out
fighting for the format and its future (which, ultimately, in the
fullness of time, is undoubtedly bleak as SSD capacities rise and prices
drop).