By Harry Mason, President of STA Continued

This year's public demonstrations were packed with interested attendees for hours following the formal program. The demonstrations showcased enterprise-rich SAS capabilities, along with educational tables. Attendees gathered information about SCSI's legacy, how SAS came into existence and its future trends. Attendees were also able to learn about the different classes of disk drives and the differences between SAS, SATA and enterprise SATA, across a variety of rotational speeds and form factors.

The connectivity solutions table previewed backplanes, cables and connectors that are broadly used when deploying SAS storage solutions. SAS expanders and scalable SAS fabrics were of specific interest in a live demonstration which complemented the hands-on SAS virtualization display.

Of high interest at the reception event was the technology preview of 6Gb/s SAS. The functional demonstrations gave a solid indication of the progress being made with interoperability across a variety of industry components, including test equipment and prominently featured 6Gb/s SAS capabilities such as multiplexing and legacy compatibility.

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