Seagate and AMD show off 6Gbit/s SATA drive

AMD has partnered with Seagate to produce a 6Gbit/s SATA drive

Hard disk specialist Seagate and chipmaker AMD have unveiled the first SATA hard drive capable of running at a transfer speed of 6Gbit/s.

The drive uses a new version of the SATA interface to hit the performance standard. Current SATA hardware is limited to speeds of 3Gbit/s.

The companies plan to bring the drives to market by the end of the calendar year. When it becomes available, the new SATA interface will be used for disk-based and solid-state hard drives.

Seagate initially plans to target the new interface at high-end markets and gaming enthusiasts, who are most affected by what the company sees as an increasingly important bottleneck in the hard drive interface.

As hard disk and solid-state drives become larger and systems become more powerful, the current SATA interface will increasingly be a drag on performance, the company argued.

"Interface speeds aren't keeping up with capacity. It's taking longer and longer to fill and empty a SATA drive," said Pete Steege, a global segment manager for Seagate. "Anything that can be done to speed up the flow is valuable."