In addition to these advanced features, the introduction of SATA II products brings a number of key performance improvements, including 3Gb/second interface speed, Native Command Queuing (NCQ), and Port Multiplier capability.
Performance doubts about SATA are put to rest not only with a 3Gb/second access rate and the Port Multiplier function, but also with Native Command Queuing. Commonly seen with Fibre Channel and SCSI, NCQ uses an algorithm to determine the most efficient order to execute commands that creates the least mechanical overhead-minimizing the number of I/O interrupts a server makes on the drive when carrying out multiple commands.
"Silicon Image's SiI 3132 with SATA II capability and the accompanying SATA Raid software enable us to offer high-end features that our customer base demands such as
Native Command Queuing and 3 Gb/s signaling," said Jerry Shen, VP of R&D at ASUS.
NCQ stands for
native command queuing and is designed to improve storage performance and reliability.
The drive features
Native Command Queuing (NCQ), an important feature that enables the hard disk controller to intelligently and simultaneously queue and reorder up to 32 instructions, resulting in a significant improvement in overall data transfer rates.
Native Command Queuing Support: NCQ is a widely anticipated feature introduced in the Serial ATA II extension to the Serial ATA 1.0 specification.
Known as Serial ATA II Extensions, the updated specification defines features such as
native command queuing, a 3-gigabit-per-second data transfer rate, basic enclosure services, staggered spin-up of disk drives, and new devices such as port multipliers to improve scalability and port selectors to improve reliability.
The Fujitsu MHT-BH is the world's first 2.5" 9.5mm mobile hard disk drive (HDD) with SATA Extensions that supports
Native Command Queuing.
Phase I of SATA II will support backplane interconnect for use with multiple disk hot-swapping,
Native Command Queuing, out-of-order execution/delivery, and data in both cable and backplane attached applications.