Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of SATA technology, today announced the availability of the Serial ATA Revision 2.6 specification. This updated specification combines the previously published SATA Revision 2.5 material with new feature definitions and enhancements that will enable developers to integrate the technology into new applications.

Benefits include:

• Internal Slimline cable and connector - enables SATA optical drives to be included in smaller form factors
• Internal Micro SATA connector for 1.8" HDD - facilitates SATA hard drives in Ultra Mobile PC applications
• Mini SATA Internal/ External Multilane cable and connector - provides access for internal use in high bandwidth backplane designs, and also external uses in eSATA or xSATA protocols for high bandwidth external storage enclosures
• Native Command Queuing (NCQ) Priority enhancement - adds priority to data in complex workload environments
• NCQ Unload enhancement - permits robust use in laptop environments where the drive may be dropped

"SATA-IO continues to evolve the Serial ATA specifications to meet the needs of our customers and the industry," said Knut Grimsrud, SATA-IO president and chairman. "The latest spec
revision defines new features and capabilities to further enhance SATA and tailor it to additional applications, including high mobility and smaller laptop form factors."

The SATA Revision 2.6 Specification is available to the public and can be downloaded at www.sata-io.org/secure/spec_download.asp.