Re: [PATCH] speed up SATA

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Stefan Smietanowski wrote:
> Hi Jeff.
> 
>> I'm about to add a raft of SATA-2 hardware, all of which are queued. 
>> The standard depth is 32, but one board supports a whopping depth of 256.
> 
> 
> Speaking of which .. I just read an announcement that someone (of course
> the name eludes me) announced a DVD Burner that's SATA.
> 
> Found it:
> 
> http://www.plextor.com/english/news/press/712SA_pr.htm
> 
> a) Are there provisions in the SATA (1) SPEC for support of
> non-disk units?
> 
> b) if (strcmp(a, "no"))
>      Do you know anything about it, ie is it SATA1 or 2 or what?
> 
> c) Let's ponder one gets a unit like this - is it usable with
> libata yet?
> 
> d) if (strcmp(c, "no"))
>      Will it? :)


SATA ATAPI looks and works just like PATA ATAPI, with one notable 
exception:  S/ATAPI will include "asynchronous notification", a feature 
that allows you to eliminate the polling of the cdrom driver that 
normally occurs.

You can use ATAPI on SATA today, using a PATA->SATA bridge.  In fact 
that's the only way I can test SATA ATAPI at all, right now.

I hope somebody sends me one of these Plextor devices for testing ;-)

	Jeff