Sata cabling

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
A cable redesign could eliminate
the crosstalk.


It would be possible to design a cable that eliminated it entirely. But the
ever present problem of 'skew' renders the design moot.

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Well you know the width of a SATA cable.
Serial data transfer right.

Take 4 SATA cables in parallel to a Hard Drive
that has four SATA connectors. What do you
have ... parallel data transfer (4 wide SATA).


Excellent idea. Call the individual paths 'express lanes'. You could have
(say) 16 of them paralleled up to give unprecidented data transfer speed.

Hang on it's already been done.

Now the data xfer rate should be 4 times faster
than a single SATA cable and the cable width
would be no wider than a PATA cable.

Now I know this is a design stretch, but if you
have a hard drive with Integrated SATA Electronics,
how hard could it be to repeat the circuit design 3 more
times to get what I'll call a SATA IIx4 interface.


Not hard at all. Alternatively design the existing serial data link to
operate 4 times faster. Result: a cheaper drive as the connectors are
cheaper.

Commodore Computers were the first to realise this when they converted the
parallel IEE-488 interface which used a very expensive connector into a
serial interface which could use a standard 'DIN' connector which cost just
a few cents. It took them several incarnations to get anywhere near the
data rate though.

Problem is I doubt the current level of a Hard Drive's
mechanical rotation, read/write data rates and buffer
size would be able to feed a 4 wide SATA connection.


Well they are going for the 4 times faster option. SATA III is in the
pipeline (which means that SATA IV is in development). But you are right,
in that, the 6 Gb/s only represent a burst data rate which is essentially
the speed they can shift the on drive cache

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Does a SATA cable look anything like a PATA cable,
no it doesn't. So who is to say a high speed Parallel
interface cable has to look anything like today's PATA cables.


It wouldn't matter how you designed the cable, 1.33 Gb/s is the practical
upper limit for parallel communication (for reasons previously discussed).

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
If we're talking about a true parallel interface, and a 32 bit data bus,
32 separate conductors are required JUST for that part of the interface
alone. And for a 16 bit data bus, it would be 16 conductors, minimum. The
problem with the required size of the connectors to accommodate all that
is pretty obvious. Heck, even the normal 40 or 80 conductor PATA
connectors, as small as they were, presents a physical problem. The
Ultra ATA 80 conductor ones simply interleaved ground wires between all
the data wires (to decrease the crosstalk problem) to raise the max
transfer rates.

JS wrote:
Well you know the width of a SATA cable.
Serial data transfer right.

And it's pretty small. Especially in comparison to any PATA ones!

Take 4 SATA cables in parallel to a Hard Drive
that has four SATA connectors. What do you
have ... parallel data transfer (4 wide SATA).

But that's not true and complete parallel data transfer, which requires
separate conductors for EACH data bit being transferred. (16 for 16 bit
data bus, 32 for 32 bit data bus), to gain the theoretical potential
advantage of parallel transfer.

Now the data xfer rate should be 4 times faster
than a single SATA cable and the cable width
would be no wider than a PATA cable.

I doubt if just doing that is really worth all the increased cost and
complexity.

Now I know this is a design stretch, but if you
have a hard drive with Integrated SATA Electronics,
how hard could it be to repeat the circuit design 3 more
times to get what I'll call a SATA IIx4 interface.

Problem is I doubt the current level of a Hard Drive's
mechanical rotation, read/write data rates and buffer
size would be able to feed a 4 wide SATA connection.

And also - it would still only be 4 wide.
That's nothing like the improvement gained when going from PATA to SATA,
so in addition to what you wrote above, it's probably not worth it.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
The point is, there is no practical design possible that will allow a
parallel cable to reach the transfer rates of a serial one, for the
reasons stated. Note the emphasis on the word practical (meaning
realizable) - not theoretical (such as with a half meter wide cable,
and/or shielded cable(s,) or whatever). (Shielded cables suffer from
increased capacitance which limits their transfer rate, so even if each
data signal cable (16 for 16 bit, or 32 for a 32 bit) were shielded,
it's
still a no go).

JS wrote:
Yes I know about 40 vs 80 design,
what I'm talking about is a total redesign.

And they do have round PATA cables,
not rated any faster but they are not wide and flat.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
They already tried that with the 80 conductor fast ATA cables. While
it
helped out a lot, it sure couldn't even come close to SATA.

Now, if you want a 40 or 80 conductor parallel cable that's a meter
wide,
with very wide separation between all the signal carrying conductors
(of
which there are a LOT, for parallel)..... perhaps that might work.
:-)

Bottom line: it's not at all practical.

JS wrote:
A cable redesign could eliminate
the crosstalk.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
On the surface, that makes sense - but only on the surface. Let me
explain:
In practice, it's a false assumption due to the inherent crosstalk
problems between adjacent signal carrying conductors in the
Parallel
ATA
cable. And THAT limits the max transfer rate. OTOH, Serial
cables
do
NOT have that problem, since only a single line is carrying the
data.
Hence, serial cables (like in SATA) can be, and are, much faster.

JS wrote:
Not crazy over the SATA connectors either.
SATA or Serial ATA has another design flaw
in that by nature serial data transfers can never
be as fast as parallel.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Gerry" wrote in message
...
I have had a disk connection problem which seems to relate to
failing
sata
cables. The BIOS has failed intermittently to detect one or both
hard
drives. The problem was more obvious with the master drive so I
replaced
the cable 14 days ago and there was no further problem until this
morning.
The problem this morning was the slave drive so I have replaced
the
cable
for that drive. It has now been working for a bit over two hour.

The problem first became apparent a month ago when I found the
system
would freeze after it had been running some time. Resetting
sometimes
worked and sometimes resulted in a failed boot. Eventually the
system
would boot but the problem would happen again some hours later or
the
next
day. Sometimes there have been Event Viewer reports -mainly ID:
11
referring to the Controller. Often the problem is unreported.
This
is
probably because the Error is occurring before Event Viewer
starts.

From a friend I got these comments.

"In my view, the SATA 'Connector' is an engineering blunder. A
sort-of
flat
sleeve slides over a notched part on the edge of the board
whereupon
sit
some exposed/un-insulated traces. Flat conductors encased within
a
plastic
bit are slid into contact with them. There is no mechanism but
friction
to
keep the 'connector' in place. Entirely inadequate. It is not
designed
for
repeated make/break insertion/removal. If subjected even to a low
number
of
such operations (design spec is 50), it will fail. (5 000 for an
eSATA
connector). If I have to repeatedly disconnect-connect a drive
during
testing, I replace the cable as a matter of routine."

I am interested in knowing whether others have encountered this
problem
and how common place it is?

TIA


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Gerry wrote:

All of this means, people will have seen a variety of user
experiences. All the way from "no problems here", to "my cable
keeps falling off, so I glued it on" :-)


Rather than use glue, a far better material is silicone rubber. Applied to
the ends of the connector, it is resilient enough to retain the connector
without breaking as the connector moves, but soft enough that it is easily
removed when you really do want to remove the connector.

What about a Fiber cable?

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Well, in a crude sense think of SATA
as a two lane highway compared to
PATA as an 8 lane highway. If the PATA
cable design was updated to handle higher
transfer rates I would think that PATA could
be at least 4x faster than SATA.


Not possible. 1.33 Gb/s is the practical limit for a copper parallel
transmission line.

And an updated PATA cable need not be a
giant size ribbon cable either. Just imagine if
your ram memory was serial access instead
of DDR2 or DDR3.


Actually, serial RAM memory already exists, but it is only used in very
specialised applications due to the cost. It is, of course, much much
faster than the type of memory that is encountered in a PC, but PC memory
is largely hamstrung because it is based on dynamic architecture which is
far slower (and cheaper) than static architecture. This is why your PC
has a apir of processor caches to speed RAM access up. The L2 cache is a
chunk of static RAM which is about 4 times faster than the main RAM and
the L1 cache is static RAM which is vastly faster than the L2 (and very
expensive - which is why it isn't very big).

FLASH memory is exclusively serial access.

IEEE-488 can be daisy chained or Star configuration.
In addition an IEEE-488 cable could be removed from
the hard drive in the middle of transferring a file and then
attached again and the file xfer would complete with no
data lost, this was possible over 25 years ago, try that
with SATA or PATA!

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Well you know the width of a SATA cable.
Serial data transfer right.

Take 4 SATA cables in parallel to a Hard Drive
that has four SATA connectors. What do you
have ... parallel data transfer (4 wide SATA).


Excellent idea. Call the individual paths 'express lanes'. You could
have (say) 16 of them paralleled up to give unprecidented data transfer
speed.

Hang on it's already been done.

Now the data xfer rate should be 4 times faster
than a single SATA cable and the cable width
would be no wider than a PATA cable.

Now I know this is a design stretch, but if you
have a hard drive with Integrated SATA Electronics,
how hard could it be to repeat the circuit design 3 more
times to get what I'll call a SATA IIx4 interface.


Not hard at all. Alternatively design the existing serial data link to
operate 4 times faster. Result: a cheaper drive as the connectors are
cheaper.

Commodore Computers were the first to realise this when they converted the
parallel IEE-488 interface which used a very expensive connector into a
serial interface which could use a standard 'DIN' connector which cost
just a few cents. It took them several incarnations to get anywhere near
the data rate though.

Problem is I doubt the current level of a Hard Drive's
mechanical rotation, read/write data rates and buffer
size would be able to feed a 4 wide SATA connection.


Well they are going for the 4 times faster option. SATA III is in the
pipeline (which means that SATA IV is in development). But you are right,
in that, the 6 Gb/s only represent a burst data rate which is essentially
the speed they can shift the on drive cache

No, I'm thinking of the 8 bit wide parallel
fiber optic transmission cable I worked
with years ago. Back then fiber was too
brittle to make any practical bends in the
cable but now it may be possible.

Today a single fiber cable can carry
a lot of data across multiple spectrums.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Not crazy over the SATA connectors either.
SATA or Serial ATA has another design flaw
in that by nature serial data transfers can never
be as fast as parallel.


Totally incorrect.

You may be thinking from the good old days where RS232 would never operate
anywhere near as fast a Parallel (Centronic) connection (this was a
limitation of the UART devices of the period, not the inherent
technology).

But the reality is: that if you want the fastest communication possible,
it has to be serial - parallel just doesn't cut the mustard. This is
because as the data rate gets faster, the signal pulses get shorter and
shorter. With a parallel connection, for various technical reasons, the
signal pulses travel down the parallel conductors at different speeds
(known as the propagation coefficient). With long pulses, it is
relatively easy to strobe the receiver when all signals are valid. But as
the pulses get shorter and shorter, there comes a point where at no point
in time do all the pulses have a point where the data is valid because
they arrive at different times. It is worth remembering that in a
transmission line that a pulse of just .01 nanoseconds duration (a long
pulse by modern standards) is approximately two millimetres long.

Serial communication, on the other hand, completely solves the problem
because, as there is only one transmission channel, the propagation
coefficient is fixed for all pulses. The principal limitation to the
transmission data rate of a serial connection these days is solely the
properties of the copper transmission line itself, but this can be
resolved by turning to fibre optic systems. Even these have limitations
dependent on the fibre material with glass being able to carry a far
greater data rate than plastic.

1.33 Gb/s is the limitation of parallel technology (even with a short
cable around a foot long), but serial ATA III* is already operating at 6
Gb/s.

* Not to be confused with ATA 3 (an unofficial designation) which is
really ATA II, .

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Well, in a crude sense think of SATA
as a two lane highway compared to
PATA as an 8 lane highway. If the PATA
cable design was updated to handle higher
transfer rates I would think that PATA could
be at least 4x faster than SATA.


Not possible. 1.33 Gb/s is the practical limit for a copper parallel
transmission line.

And an updated PATA cable need not be a
giant size ribbon cable either. Just imagine if
your ram memory was serial access instead
of DDR2 or DDR3.


Actually, serial RAM memory already exists, but it is only used in very
specialised applications due to the cost. It is, of course, much much
faster than the type of memory that is encountered in a PC, but PC memory
is largely hamstrung because it is based on dynamic architecture which is
far slower (and cheaper) than static architecture. This is why your PC
has a apir of processor caches to speed RAM access up. The L2 cache is a
chunk of static RAM which is about 4 times faster than the main RAM and
the L1 cache is static RAM which is vastly faster than the L2 (and very
expensive - which is why it isn't very big).

FLASH memory is exclusively serial access.


What about a Fiber cable?


[Top posting corrected]

If you mean a fibre optic cable, these are exclusively serial devices. It
would not be possible to operate a number of fibres as a parallel data link
because they suffer skew in the transmission times as well. Although the
effect is less marked than it is with copper, the ability to transmit much
shorter pulses of light brings the problem firmly back to the fore again.

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Well you know the width of a SATA cable.
Serial data transfer right.

Take 4 SATA cables in parallel to a Hard Drive
that has four SATA connectors. What do you
have ... parallel data transfer (4 wide SATA).


Excellent idea. Call the individual paths 'express lanes'. You could
have (say) 16 of them paralleled up to give unprecidented data transfer
speed.

Hang on it's already been done.

Now the data xfer rate should be 4 times faster
than a single SATA cable and the cable width
would be no wider than a PATA cable.

Now I know this is a design stretch, but if you
have a hard drive with Integrated SATA Electronics,
how hard could it be to repeat the circuit design 3 more
times to get what I'll call a SATA IIx4 interface.


Not hard at all. Alternatively design the existing serial data link to
operate 4 times faster. Result: a cheaper drive as the connectors are
cheaper.

Commodore Computers were the first to realise this when they converted
the parallel IEE-488 interface which used a very expensive connector into
a serial interface which could use a standard 'DIN' connector which cost
just a few cents. It took them several incarnations to get anywhere near
the data rate though.

Problem is I doubt the current level of a Hard Drive's
mechanical rotation, read/write data rates and buffer
size would be able to feed a 4 wide SATA connection.


Well they are going for the 4 times faster option. SATA III is in the
pipeline (which means that SATA IV is in development). But you are
right, in that, the 6 Gb/s only represent a burst data rate which is
essentially the speed they can shift the on drive cache



IEEE-488 can be daisy chained or Star configuration.
In addition an IEEE-488 cable could be removed from
the hard drive in the middle of transferring a file and then
attached again and the file xfer would complete with no
data lost, this was possible over 25 years ago, try that
with SATA or PATA!


[Top posting corrected - AGAIN]

Although PATA is not hot puggable, SATA is. I haven't tried pulling the
plug in the middle of a transfer, but I can't think of anything that would
prevent the completion of the transfer.

The fact that I can't think of anything, don't make it so though.

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Not crazy over the SATA connectors either.
SATA or Serial ATA has another design flaw
in that by nature serial data transfers can never
be as fast as parallel.


Totally incorrect.

You may be thinking from the good old days where RS232 would never
operate anywhere near as fast a Parallel (Centronic) connection (this was
a limitation of the UART devices of the period, not the inherent
technology).

But the reality is: that if you want the fastest communication possible,
it has to be serial - parallel just doesn't cut the mustard. This is
because as the data rate gets faster, the signal pulses get shorter and
shorter. With a parallel connection, for various technical reasons, the
signal pulses travel down the parallel conductors at different speeds
(known as the propagation coefficient). With long pulses, it is
relatively easy to strobe the receiver when all signals are valid. But
as the pulses get shorter and shorter, there comes a point where at no
point in time do all the pulses have a point where the data is valid
because they arrive at different times. It is worth remembering that in a
transmission line that a pulse of just .01 nanoseconds duration (a long
pulse by modern standards) is approximately two millimetres long.

Serial communication, on the other hand, completely solves the problem
because, as there is only one transmission channel, the propagation
coefficient is fixed for all pulses. The principal limitation to the
transmission data rate of a serial connection these days is solely the
properties of the copper transmission line itself, but this can be
resolved by turning to fibre optic systems. Even these have limitations
dependent on the fibre material with glass being able to carry a far
greater data rate than plastic.

1.33 Gb/s is the limitation of parallel technology (even with a short
cable around a foot long), but serial ATA III* is already operating at 6
Gb/s.

* Not to be confused with ATA 3 (an unofficial designation) which is
really ATA II, .


No, I'm thinking of the 8 bit wide parallel
fiber optic transmission cable I worked
with years ago. Back then fiber was too
brittle to make any practical bends in the
cable but now it may be possible.


[Top posting corrected]

That was then. Data rates are now such that signal skew would prevent a
parallel fibre system operating at anywhere near the speed serial ones are
capable of.

Today a single fiber cable can carry
a lot of data across multiple spectrums.


True, but they are all serial data streams. If you wish to divide up the
bandwidth to handle multiple parallel data streams, then the total bandwidth
is still limited by the bandwidth of the fibre - or in other words, you gain
nothing.

Please don't top post - it makes it harder for others to follow the
discussion.

I doubt the short distance/length that a Fiber Optic
connected from a Hard Drive to the motherboard
would cause any significant skew.

See:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/lo...hDecision=-203

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
Well, in a crude sense think of SATA
as a two lane highway compared to
PATA as an 8 lane highway. If the PATA
cable design was updated to handle higher
transfer rates I would think that PATA could
be at least 4x faster than SATA.


Not possible. 1.33 Gb/s is the practical limit for a copper parallel
transmission line.

And an updated PATA cable need not be a
giant size ribbon cable either. Just imagine if
your ram memory was serial access instead
of DDR2 or DDR3.


Actually, serial RAM memory already exists, but it is only used in very
specialised applications due to the cost. It is, of course, much much
faster than the type of memory that is encountered in a PC, but PC
memory is largely hamstrung because it is based on dynamic architecture
which is far slower (and cheaper) than static architecture. This is why
your PC has a apir of processor caches to speed RAM access up. The L2
cache is a chunk of static RAM which is about 4 times faster than the
main RAM and the L1 cache is static RAM which is vastly faster than the
L2 (and very expensive - which is why it isn't very big).

FLASH memory is exclusively serial access.


What about a Fiber cable?


[Top posting corrected]

If you mean a fibre optic cable, these are exclusively serial devices. It
would not be possible to operate a number of fibres as a parallel data
link because they suffer skew in the transmission times as well. Although
the effect is less marked than it is with copper, the ability to transmit
much shorter pulses of light brings the problem firmly back to the fore
again.

Well JS the thread has skewed off topicG!. The topic was the reliabilty of
sata cable and connectors!


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


JS wrote:
I doubt the short distance/length that a Fiber Optic
connected from a Hard Drive to the motherboard
would cause any significant skew.

See:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/lo...hDecision=-203


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message
...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message
...
Well, in a crude sense think of SATA
as a two lane highway compared to
PATA as an 8 lane highway. If the PATA
cable design was updated to handle higher
transfer rates I would think that PATA could
be at least 4x faster than SATA.


Not possible. 1.33 Gb/s is the practical limit for a copper
parallel transmission line.

And an updated PATA cable need not be a
giant size ribbon cable either. Just imagine if
your ram memory was serial access instead
of DDR2 or DDR3.


Actually, serial RAM memory already exists, but it is only used in
very specialised applications due to the cost. It is, of course,
much much faster than the type of memory that is encountered in a
PC, but PC memory is largely hamstrung because it is based on
dynamic architecture which is far slower (and cheaper) than static
architecture. This is why your PC has a apir of processor caches
to speed RAM access up. The L2 cache is a chunk of static RAM
which is about 4 times faster than the main RAM and the L1 cache
is static RAM which is vastly faster than the L2 (and very
expensive - which is why it isn't very big). FLASH memory is
exclusively serial access.


What about a Fiber cable?


[Top posting corrected]

If you mean a fibre optic cable, these are exclusively serial
devices. It would not be possible to operate a number of fibres as
a parallel data link because they suffer skew in the transmission
times as well. Although the effect is less marked than it is with
copper, the ability to transmit much shorter pulses of light brings
the problem firmly back to the fore again.

007

Can I drag you back to the topic of the thread? What has been your
experience with regard to the reliability of the connectors / cabling?


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


M.I.5¾ wrote:
"JS" @ wrote in message
...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message
...
Well you know the width of a SATA cable.
Serial data transfer right.

Take 4 SATA cables in parallel to a Hard Drive
that has four SATA connectors. What do you
have ... parallel data transfer (4 wide SATA).


Excellent idea. Call the individual paths 'express lanes'. You
could have (say) 16 of them paralleled up to give unprecidented
data transfer speed.

Hang on it's already been done.

Now the data xfer rate should be 4 times faster
than a single SATA cable and the cable width
would be no wider than a PATA cable.

Now I know this is a design stretch, but if you
have a hard drive with Integrated SATA Electronics,
how hard could it be to repeat the circuit design 3 more
times to get what I'll call a SATA IIx4 interface.


Not hard at all. Alternatively design the existing serial data
link to operate 4 times faster. Result: a cheaper drive as the
connectors are cheaper.

Commodore Computers were the first to realise this when they
converted the parallel IEE-488 interface which used a very
expensive connector into a serial interface which could use a
standard 'DIN' connector which cost just a few cents. It took them
several incarnations to get anywhere near the data rate though.

Problem is I doubt the current level of a Hard Drive's
mechanical rotation, read/write data rates and buffer
size would be able to feed a 4 wide SATA connection.


Well they are going for the 4 times faster option. SATA III is in
the pipeline (which means that SATA IV is in development). But you
are right, in that, the 6 Gb/s only represent a burst data rate
which is essentially the speed they can shift the on drive cache



IEEE-488 can be daisy chained or Star configuration.
In addition an IEEE-488 cable could be removed from
the hard drive in the middle of transferring a file and then
attached again and the file xfer would complete with no
data lost, this was possible over 25 years ago, try that
with SATA or PATA!


[Top posting corrected - AGAIN]

Although PATA is not hot puggable, SATA is. I haven't tried pulling
the plug in the middle of a transfer, but I can't think of anything
that would prevent the completion of the transfer.

The fact that I can't think of anything, don't make it so though.

Well said.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Gerry" wrote in message
...
Well JS the thread has skewed off topicG!. The topic was the reliabilty
of sata cable and connectors!


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


JS wrote:
I doubt the short distance/length that a Fiber Optic
connected from a Hard Drive to the motherboard
would cause any significant skew.

See:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/lo...hDecision=-203


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message
...
--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"M.I.5¾" wrote in message
...

"JS" @ wrote in message
...
Well, in a crude sense think of SATA
as a two lane highway compared to
PATA as an 8 lane highway. If the PATA
cable design was updated to handle higher
transfer rates I would think that PATA could
be at least 4x faster than SATA.


Not possible. 1.33 Gb/s is the practical limit for a copper
parallel transmission line.

And an updated PATA cable need not be a
giant size ribbon cable either. Just imagine if
your ram memory was serial access instead
of DDR2 or DDR3.


Actually, serial RAM memory already exists, but it is only used in
very specialised applications due to the cost. It is, of course,
much much faster than the type of memory that is encountered in a
PC, but PC memory is largely hamstrung because it is based on
dynamic architecture which is far slower (and cheaper) than static
architecture. This is why your PC has a apir of processor caches
to speed RAM access up. The L2 cache is a chunk of static RAM
which is about 4 times faster than the main RAM and the L1 cache
is static RAM which is vastly faster than the L2 (and very
expensive - which is why it isn't very big). FLASH memory is
exclusively serial access.


What about a Fiber cable?


[Top posting corrected]

If you mean a fibre optic cable, these are exclusively serial
devices. It would not be possible to operate a number of fibres as
a parallel data link because they suffer skew in the transmission
times as well. Although the effect is less marked than it is with
copper, the ability to transmit much shorter pulses of light brings
the problem firmly back to the fore again.

"JS" @ wrote in message ...
I doubt the short distance/length that a Fiber Optic
connected from a Hard Drive to the motherboard
would cause any significant skew.

Perhaps not, but the issue with drives isn't the bus speed, it's the
platter-to-head speed. A $1 SATA cable can handle the max burst data rate
any HDD can deliver today, and lots more, too.

-John O