Mini SAS & SATA: Key to Increasing Performance without Increasing Cost

Mini SAS and SATA are the standard connecting serial protocols that meet the current enterprise solution of mass data transfer and storage. They reliably perform to the demanding requirements of high speed data storage, offering more reliability and data integrity. In the past, most storage systems used the parallel bus interface. But serial technology has many advantages when compared to parallel technology. It allows the flow of data in single stream by wrapping bits of data into packets and has the capability to transfer many times faster than the parallel technique.

Mini SAS to SATA works as a successor to the older parallel SCSI and ATA technologies. SATA (Serial ATA) extends over the ATA (advanced technology attachment) by delivering 1.5G bps interconnection starting speed and integrates easily with the capabilities of SAS (serial attached SCSI). SAS improves in speed dramatically over SCSI (small computer system interface). SATA continues to make inroads with its low cost per gigabytes into networked storage systems, sub- entry servers or in desktop computers.  SAS offers the improved drive address ability up to 16,256 devices per port and expands the connectivity with the speed of 6G bps. This small connector is also supported in dual ported applications. Mini SAS allows the connectivity up to 128 physical links including host connections.

Connector signals of SATA are the subset of SAS signals, and this advancement supports the compatibility of SAS interface with lower cost SATA drives. SAS has become a universally accepted interconnection, so system builders can easily integrate either SAS or SATA devices depending on their customer’s specific requirement. This flexibility greatly expands the range of products a system builder can offer.

Reliable and High Performance: SCSI Terminator

A Terminator is an electric device which when placed at the end of a transmission line, prevents an electrical signal from being reflected back from the end. It is designed to match the impedance and minimizes signal reflection. A terminator is one of two types, either active or passive. The difference between the two lies in the fact that an active terminator consists of a voltage regulator and the passive one consists of simple resistors.

A SCSI Terminator must be designed and manufactured in such a way that it meets or exceeds the ANSI standards. The word SCSI is termed as small computer system interface and these terminators are used for those specific types of hard drives. These provide us a reliable signal with long cable runs of up to 6 meters along with increased data rates, satisfying us with high performance and reliability. The performance depends upon the way in which the resistors and diodes of a terminator work with each other resulting in balancing fluctuations that don’t match with the line impedance.

You can get a wide variety of such terminators including active, passive, single ended, High Voltage Differential (HVD), and Low Voltage Differential (LVD), such as Ultra2, Ultra 160, and Ultra 320. All have different specifications which makes it critical to choose the proper terminator for the specific SCSI bus application. And because a terminator is such a critical item for your high performance SCSI system, always try to buy the best quality product.