T10 Accepts Proposal on Serial Attached SCSI Standard

The SCSI Trade Association (STA) and the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) announced today that the Serial Attached SCSI proposal presented to INCITS Technical Committee T10 at their May 2 meeting was accepted and that T10 voted to develop a Serial Attached SCSI standard. T10 is responsible for developing and maintaining all SCSI standards for INCITS. STA’s ultimate goal is the acceptance of Serial Attached SCSI as an international technology standard.

The proposed Serial Attached SCSI standard is a device level interface which builds on the foundation of the SCSI protocol while bringing the advantages of a serial point-to-point interconnect. The serial interface will enable dense storage solutions as well as the migration to smaller form factors. A key objective of Serial Attached SCSI is to offer unprecedented customer choice by allowing a single infrastructure to support both enterprise class Serial Attached SCSI drives and Serial ATA drives for cost-sensitive applications.

Harry Mason, President of the STA Board of Directors and Director of Industry Marketing at LSI Logic, stated: “Serial Attached SCSI provides the foundation for a long-term SCSI roadmap, continuing the 20-year history of SCSI’s strengths in the enterprise. Once adopted, Serial Attached SCSI will offer the reliability, availability, scalability and performance required in robust storage environments.”

As chair of INCITS Technical Committee T10, John Lohmeyer, Principal Engineer, LSI Logic, commented: “I am pleased that the SCSI Trade Association has selected INCITS’ T10 as the group to work on this project. The committee voted to approve the Serial Attached SCSI project proposal, which is reflective of their long-time association with SCSI. Anticipating INCITS acceptance, we have scheduled two working group meetings in June to get a rapid start on this important project.”

Dan Tanner, Senior Analyst, Aberdeen Storage Group, said: “Serial Attached SCSI promises to play a significant role in unifying future enterprise class storage device connections. Legacy compatibility, with two decades of enterprise-proven logical SCSI in a point-to-point topology aimed at meeting future subsystem requirements, makes Serial Attached SCSI a very compelling interface.”

The STA’s charter is to define the marketing requirements for Serial Attached SCSI and to promote the technology to the industry. In this capacity, STA guides development of the standard, ensuring that it meets industry needs. STA estimates that Serial Attached SCSI products will enter the market in 2004, enabling customers to invest in technology that delivers a scalable feature set, backward compatibility and cost-effective industry-standard storage I/O.