The Serial ATA international organization (SATA-IO), the industry consortium dedicated to standardization of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, said on Thursday that SATA Express, a new specification that standardizes PCI Express (PCIe) as an interface for client storage, has started the ratification process.

The specification has moved into the member review stage, the final step prior to the specification’s release to SATA-IO members. SATA Express will be available to the general public in the next version of the specification, expected to be completed in 2013. PCIe technology enables interface speeds of up to 1GB/s per lane in the client space, as compared to today’s SATA technology at 0.6GB/s. Storage devices not requiring the speed of SATA Express will continue to be served by existing SATA technology. The specification will define new SATA Express device connectors and motherboard connectors that will support both new PCIe drives and existing SATA devices.

“SATA-IO members have worked together to create the SATA Express specification to bring the scalability of PCIe to client storage. This industry-wide effort has made a new level of performance available to client applications and enables connectivity to SATA Express enterprise hosts via the SFF-8639 multifunction connector,” said Mladen Luksic, SATA-IO president.

SATA Express enables an ecosystem for client storage in which SATA and PCIe solutions can coexist, providing a low-cost solution to fully utilize the performance of next generation solid state drives (SSDs) and hybrid drives.

Tags: Serial ATA, SATA, PCIe, PCI Express, SSD, HDD