in050355
Annual Report for: [TC T13]
Covering the Period from [
Title of INCITS Subgroup: ATA Storage Interface
Links:
Informal Description of Work:
Technical
Committee T13 is responsible for all interface standards relating to
the
popular AT Attachment (ATA) storage interface utilized as the hard disk
drive,
CD, and DVD interface on most personal and mobile computers, personal
audio
players and personal video recorders today.
At the moment, T13 is responsible for eight published standards, three published technical reports, two draft technical reports and five draft standards in development. Six new projects were initiated, and two published standards were withdrawn during the reporting period.
T13 began the reporting period with 19 voting principal members and ended with 20 voting principal members.
Because the ATA interface
is
contained totally within the host computer enclosure and does not
provide an
external interface, Technical Committee T13 did not previously
participate in
the international standards process. T13 plans to pursue international
standardization for INCITS 397:2005 AT Attachment with Packet Interface
– 7.
T13 completed work on project 1532D AT Attachment with Packet Interface -7 (ATA/ATAPI-7). This 851 page document describes the disk drive interface for more than 90 percent of the world’s hard disk drives and optical disk drives. It includes for the first time in ATA standards the Serial ATA interface.
T13 also completed work on project 1572D BIOS Enhanced Disk Drives Services -3, which extends the series of EDD standards that describe the BIOS interface used with hard disk drives.
Technical report project 1696-TR-N Time Limited Read/Write Mode was completed. This TR describes a method of controlling the time allowed for a sequence of commands to complete.
T13 started work on the ATA8 series of standards projects. The ATA standard is being divided into several projects to make editing and updating easier. The ATA8 Projects are:
We found volunteer hosts for our two and a half day meetings during the reporting period. T13 would like to thank Fujitsu Corp., Hitachi GST Corp., Maxtor Corp., nVidia Corp., Phoenix Technologies Corp., and Seagate Corp. for hosting T13 meetings. T13 has volunteer hosts for the upcoming year.
Late in the development of ATA/ATAPI-7 the committee decided to remove the Time Limited Read/Write feature from the draft standard by a close majority vote. This was a contentious issue. The committee then authorized a technical report project (1696-TR-N) to contain the material removed from ATA/ATAPI-7. This allowed publication of the Time Limited Read/Write feature method without making it a standard feature. This compromise seems to be acceptable by all parties to the controversy.
The 1612DT AV ATA/ATAPI AV Command Set Usage Guidelines technical report development is behind schedule. The area of AV applications is relatively new and industry experience with the ATA/ATAPI AV Command Set has not been sufficient to generate meaningful guidelines. T13 will either complete the TR project in the next year or cancel the project.
There are several ongoing challenges that may affect T13’s work. A new industry interest group specializing in the Serial ATA disk drive interface known as the Serial ATA International Organization, or SATA-IO, has been formed. The work of SATA-IO may overlap with the scope of T13. T13 is working with the SATA-IO to establish liaison procedures and to make the relationship between T13 standards and SATA-IO specifications clear. This discussion may become contentious if T13 and SATA-IO claim overlapping areas of responsibility.
T13 developed standards contain reserved fields, functions, and codes. Disk drive developers may elect to use these resources without first obtaining permission from T13. This results in an installed base of non-standard products. T13 will continue to warn members and others that using reserved fields exposes developers to future re-definition.
|
Meeting Number |
Date |
Location |
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45 |
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46 |
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47 |
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48 |
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49 |
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50 |
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51 |
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52 |
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53 |
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Meeting Number |
Date |
Location |
|
54 |
August, 23-26, 2005 |
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55 |
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56 |
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57 |
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58 |
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59 |
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INCITS TC T10
There are three primary liaison missions with T10.
Compact Flash Association
(CFA)
The Compact Flash form factor devices use the ATA command set. T13 works with CFA when new features and functions require standards changes. CFA refers to down level ATA standards so T13 will encourage CFA to migrate to later ATA standards.
IDEMA (International Disk
Drive Equipment
and Materials Association)
T13 is working with IDMEA on longer physical sector issues and consumer electronics issues.
SATA-IO (Serial ATA
International
Organization)
T13 has established a formal liaison procedure with the SATA-IO. Please see clause 4.
Trusted Computing Group (TCG)
T13 has allocated command codes for the TCG trusted send and receive commands. These commands will allow a host system to assure the communication path to disk drives is secure. The TCG has not presented a first draft of their command functions to T13 yet.
SFF (Small Form Factor)
SFF develops specifications for drive form factors and connectors. Once incorporated in T13 documents SFF makes their specifications obsolete and refer to T13 standards.
MMCA (Multi Media Card
Association)
The Multi Media Card Association is considering methods of transporting ATA commands using their electrical interface.
CE-ATA
A new industry consortium has been formed to develop a version of ATA called CE-ATA for flash and disk drives. T13 has not formed a liaison relationship with CE-ATA. T13 will attempt to do so at least to allow misdirected inquires to be forwarded to the correct organization.
|
Position (and training date) |
Name and organization represented |
|
Chair (04/04) |
Daniel Colegrove, Hitachi GST Inc. |
|
Vice Chair |
James Hatfield, Seagate Corp. |
|
Secretary |
Mark Overby, nVidia Corp. |
|
International Representative |
none |
|
Vocabulary Representative |
none |
The
INCITS database was checked on
The majority of hard disk drive manufacturers are members of T13. T13 also has members from chipset, system, and interface electronics manufacturers. Unfortunately, representation from the optical disk drive industry is infrequent, but this is compensated for somewhat by our liaison work with the T10 Mulimedia Commands Set working group.
The ATA disk drive interface is used on more than 90% of all hard disk and optical disk drives. Because of its popularity it has been used in the Compact Flash Association form factor flash and disk drives. It is likely that the predominant hard disk drive interface will continue to be the ATA interface over the next 3-5 years. There will be incremental improvements such as faster speeds. The ATA interface is being used in consumer electronics devices in addition to computers. This will increase the need for new feature standardization.
Serial ATA has enabled the use of ATA drives in large scale arrays. This will result in new features to support RAID arrays. The SAS interface developed by T10 allows both SATA and SAS disk drives to be supported in the same disk drive enclosure. As a result, T10 and T13 will have to maintain a close liaison.
T13 plans follow on projects to the ATA8 projects now being developed. The parallel ATA transport is stable, while the ATA command set continues to grow to meet new needs. The rate of new command set projects may increase, reducing the time lag from proposal to approval, while the parallel ATA standard may not be revised again.
T13 does not collect or disburse funds.
The current membership policy is acceptable to T13. It is a benefit to allow non-members to participate on the T13 message reflector to get a wide range of opinions on proposals before T13. Occasionally non-members attend the T13 meetings. This also provides important feed back and is a good membership recruiting tool.