Seagate and Intel demonstrated the industry's first native Serial ATA hard drive implementation, at PC Expo in New York. The companies connected a new Barracuda ATA V hard drive - with a native Serial ATA interface running at full speed - to an Intel reference validation motherboard in a high-performance PC game box, provided by HardDrive.com.

The Serial ATA interface provides a throughput of 150 Mbytes per second, and a very quick and responsive experience in extreme applications like gaming, home video editing and home network hubs. Serial ATA is the first new internal PC storage interface technology since Parallel ATA technology was introduced 20 years ago, and Seagate, Intel, and others have led the efforts to develop it for use in products. Seagate's Serial ATA architecture is fully native to provide the full throughput promised by the new technology. The Serial ATA interface is expected to allow more complex, flexible and intelligent storage systems.

"In working with Seagate to put this demo together, we are excited to show this new technology in advancing the PC platform," said Jason Ziller, Intel Technology Initiatives Manager and Serial ATA Working Group Chairman. "Seagate, Intel, and other industry leaders have been working closely for the past couple of years to develop the Serial ATA architecture. With higher performance, enhanced data reliability and industry wide support, we expect Serial ATA to be adopted quickly into the computing marketplace."

"Seagate is dedicated to technology leadership without compromise. Today's demonstration by Seagate and Intel is the realization of faster, simpler, more flexible ATA disc drive technology," said Darci Arnold, Seagate vice president, Global Marketing. "Seagate's first Serial ATA product, which will be available in the fall, will give our customers a new kind of design freedom and the ability to keep improving system performance much farther into the future."

Seagate's native architecture enables full Serial ATA transfer speeds and adds no excess components or slow overhead to reduce performance. Seagate's native solution interfaces directly with the Serial ATA bus and the internal logic of the disc controller. By contrast, Serial ATA "bridge" architectures must translate Parallel data streams into Serial data streams and back again - and may be limited by the speed of the Parallel ATA controller on the drive.

Serial ATA can use intelligent data handling and command queuing to bring users the right data more quickly than ever. Because it's hot-pluggable, Serial ATA will simplify new-generation ATA devices like removable in-dash car computers and music players. Thin cables and simple snap-in connectors will make it easier to develop entirely new, smaller form factors in the PC, mobile and Consumer Electronics world. It's easier to install and configure because it features hot plug capability and point-to-point connection from the drive to the host with no need for jumper settings. It offers excellent power management for mobile systems or low power systems, and better data reliability with 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy Checking protection on both command data and data on the bus. For system developers, Serial ATA will offer 100-percent software compatibility with Parallel ATA and an easy transition for PC makers.

Seagate will offer its Serial ATA version of its newest high-performance PC hard drive, Barracuda ATA V, in the fall as leading chip providers begin shipping Serial ATA discrete host controllers on add-in cards and motherboards. Together, these products will enable the PC and Consumer Electronics industries to begin the transition to Serial ATA products.