INCITS/RD-6, INCITS Subgroup Annual Report Guide

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 5 Annual Report for: [TC T13] Covering the Period from [1/30/2004] to [5/15/2005 ] Title of INCITS Subgroup: ATA Storage Interface Links: Executive summary Link to Subgroup's area on the Secretariat's Projects Database Significant accomplishments Significant challenges Expected challenges Previous year's meetings Next year's meetings Liaison activities Membership and Officers Future Trends Other administrative information 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. 1. Executive Summary 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 Six new projects were initiated, and two published standards were withdrawn during the reporting period.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 Significant Accomplishments 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.

2 Page 2 of 5 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: ATA8-AAM ATA Architecture Model (project 1700D) ATA8-ACS ATA Command Set (project 1699D) ATA8-APT ATA Parallel Transport (project 1698D) ATA8-AST ATA Serial Transport (project 1697D) 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. 3. Significant Challenges 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. 4. Expected Challenges 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. 5. Committee Activities a. Previous Year's Meetings: Meeting Number Date Location 45 February 24-26, 2004 Santa Clara, CA 46 April 19-21, 2004 Longmont, CO 47 June 22-24, 2004 San Jose, CA 48 August 24-26, 2004 Longmont, CO 49 October 19-21, 2004 Las Vegas, NV 50 December 14-16, 2004 Las Vegas, NV

3 Page 3 of 5 51 February 22-24, 2005 Santa Clara, CA 52 April 19-21, 2005 Longmont, CO 53 June 21-24,2005 Irvine, CA b. Next Year's Planned Meetings: Meeting Number Date Location 54 August, 23-26, 2005 Longmont, CO 55 October 18-21, 2005 Las Vegas, NV 56 December 13-16, 2005 Las Vegas, NV 57 February 21-24, 2006 Orange County, CA 58 April 18-21, 2006 Longmont, CO 59 June 20-23, 2006 Seattle, WA 6. Liaison Activities INCITS TC T10 There are three primary liaison missions with T10. The SAS standard contains a SATA Tunneling Protocol, or STP, which allows SATA protocol, as described in T13 s ATA/ATAPI-7 standard, to pass through the SAS network. Changes to SATA may impact STP. T10 is also developing a SCSI to ATA translation standard to facilitate storage systems which appear to be SCSI at a higher level but which use SATA drives. SCSI to ATA translation depends on ATA drive functions so T13 needs to be aware of the SCSI to ATA work. The commands transferred to optical media drives, such as DVD s, use the ATAPI protocol defined by T13 and the MMC command set developed in 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

4 Page 4 of 5 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. 7. Membership and Officers a. Officers: Position (and training date) Chair (04/04) Vice Chair Secretary International Representative Vocabulary Representative Name and organization represented Daniel Colegrove, Hitachi GST Inc. James Hatfield, Seagate Corp. Mark Overby, nvidia Corp. none none All officers have served for the full reporting period b. Membership: The INCITS database was checked on 5/10/ Future Trends and Related Technical Activities 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. 9. Other Administrative Information

5 Page 5 of 5 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.