Net said:
Is it actually faster than SATA 3.0 in a laptop? Any online reviews
out yet?
There is no purpose in using SATA 6Gbit/sec on ordinary hard
drives. The best place for that storage standard, is
with SSD (solid state) disks. You can find solid state
drives that can sustain SATA III rates. If all that
you're using is ordinary rotating media hard drives,
your search is a waste of time.
" Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAA256MAG-1G1 1.8" 256GB SATA III MLC SSD $530 "
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148360
AMD has SATA III on a Southbridge. That improves the odds of
it making it into a retail computer. (Dell/HP/Acer/Gateway don't
like to increase manufacturing cost, by adding chips to the
motherboard. So you won't typically find them adding a
Marvell 6Gbit/sec chip to a design. If the Southbridge
has such an interface, then "it's free". That is their
design perspective, to try to do as much as possible,
using the basic chipset. That means laptop manufacturers
await whatever the Northbridge/Southbridge maker can provide.
And they're not always "first out of the gate" with new tech.)
AMD seems to be going through an era of secrecy, and reliable
and easy to find information on their site is hard to find.
Note that this article says that SB850 has SATA III, but I
was hoping to discover whether SB850 existed in a mobile
chipset or not. And I can't find any information on
that. And similarly, I can't find any info on SB820, which
*might* have it. If AMD can't be bothered to present
even the simplest of information about their products,
how do they expect free promotion ? AMD used to be
pretty good about free information flow, but not any
more. Maybe they fired all their "web weenies" ?
It's hard to make excuses for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_chipsets
"SB850 6 × 6Gb/s AHCI 1.2"
I haven't heard of SATA III on Intel yet, but maybe I missed it.
Marvell is a peripheral chip maker, and they're a source
of a lot of neat toys. Marvell chips are used on
retail motherboards, for when you buy your own motherboard
and build a computer. Then you can have SATA III.
Also, you can get SATA III, as a desktop add-on, via this
card. This card has a Marvell chip on it. It has both
USB3 and SATA III.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813995004
The NEC USB3 chip is on the left of this picture. The
Marvell SATA III is on the right. And the bridge converter
chip (PCIE x4 Rev1 to (2) PCIE x1 Rev2) is the center chip.
This is a bargain, considering the silicon provided.
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-995-004-Z03?$S640W$
The part numbers of the devices on that card, are mentioned here.
µPD720200 USB 3.0, Marvell 88SE9123-NAA2, PLX PEX8613 bridge chip.
Maybe a search on "88SE9123 laptop" will dig up a machine with it ?
http://www.techpowerup.com/107211/ASUS_Ready_with_U3S6_USB_3.0_SATA_6_Gb_s_Addon_Card.html
And if you look long enough, you might find this. An ExpressCard add-on
working at SATA III rates.
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/adexsa6g-2e.asp
Why is that a bad idea ? The question would be, what laptop
has a Revision 2 ExpressPort slot on it ? If they're available,
they're Revision 1 and then your Addonics card runs at SATA II
speeds. There may be chipsets with lots of Revision 2 lanes
left over, but that's going to be pretty hard to figure
out from your typical, dumbed down, laptop manufacturer website.
And then, your disk would be external anyway, and not very
portable.
One of the reasons it's hard to put Revision 2 lanes all over
the place, is the clock signal running to the slot, must be
of the "low jitter" kind. Some designs within the last
couple years, have had trouble with that. You can't just grab
any old clock signal and use it. And premium clock signals
on the motherboard, are saved for things like video card
interfaces. That makes it a bit harder, to do a good job
on add-on devices, like the NEC USB3 chip or the Marvell SATA III
chip. If the chip makers went with PCIE x4 R1 interfaces, rather
than PCIE x1 R2 interfaces, this wouldn't have been nearly the
same problem. The Rev1 clock signals are easier to come by.
HTH,
Paul
