Despite the fact that the chipset developers do not ship any I/O controllers supporting SerialATA, the standard is heavily promoted by the mainboard manufacturers, as they are very much interested in adding new attractive functions to their products.

Well, Digitimes reports that SiS and VIA Technologies are getting ready to introduce their chips supporting the new protocol in Q4 (SiS964) or even later (new VT8235 version), and Intel has even postponed the launching of its ICH5 to the first half of 2003. In the meanwhile Promise Technology, Silicon Image and Marvell Technology have already introduced their discrete SerialATA controllers, which are very popular among the mainboard guys willing to declare one more attractive feature for their new products.

Since the controller and the mainboard layout modification cost the vendors around $7, the latter install them only on their high-end products. In case of Pentium 4, these are SiS648 supporting DDR400 and AGP 8x, and i845G from Intel. Although the latter has been initially planned as a relatively cheap solution, its high performance automatically assigned it the label of an expensive product. The first products equipped with the integrated SerialATA controllers have already started cropping up in the market. Platforms for AMD processors with the implemented SerialATA support are to come a bit later, namely closer to the end of July or beginning of August, as soon as the nForce820 and VIA KT400 become mass.

Bearing in mind that HDDs with SerialATA interface will hardly turn up before autumn, the corresponding mainboards are most likely to become demanded only then.

However, everything mentioned above makes sense only for the DIY market and some smaller PC makers working in the local markets. The mass invasion of the SerialATA devices is expected only next year.