Intel Press Release

Serial ATA Working Group Completes Ultra SATA/1500 Draft Specification 1.0

Serial ATA Continues to Meet Aggressive Milestones Set at the Beginning of the Year, with New Ultra SATA/1500 Draft Specification 1.0

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- November 21, 2000 - Computer industry leaders today announced that the Draft Specification 1.0 defining Serial ATA (SATA), the high performance interface for storage devices, is now complete and available to the Serial ATA Working Group Contributors and Adopters.

Serial ATA will supply storage interface headroom for many generations to come, beginning with Ultra SATA/1500 at 1.5Gbps, scalable to 2x and 4x. This interface is used to connect storage devices, such as hard disk, DVD and CD-RW drives, to the PC motherboard. Serial ATA will be the replacement for today's Parallel ATA physical storage interface.

While maintaining compatibility with today's software, Serial ATA will provide a storage interface that meets the needs of tomorrow's computers and links emerging system and storage technologies. Serial ATA will also enable computer manufacturers to design systems with cables that are simpler to route and install and will enable the use of smaller connectors and lower voltages than is possible with the existing Parallel ATA technology.

The seven Serial ATA Working Group Promoters are APT Technologies Inc., Dell Computer Corporation, IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation, Maxtor Corporation, Quantum Corporation and Seagate Technology. Since the announcement of the Serial ATA Working Group effort at the Intel Developer Forum in February 2000, the group has added more than 60 Contributor and Adopter companies to the membership from the silicon design, cable/connector, storage and systems industries.

More information about the Serial ATA Working Group is available at www.serialata.org.

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