What, in your opinion, is a beneficial advancement in computer technology?
I would go with SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) for five reasons. These five reasons are more like advantages over PATA, which are: hot-swapping, cost, reduced wire count, speed, and protocol.
Hot-swapping is a huge advantage over PATA. Can you imagine just the first thought and discussion about a technology allowing a user to plug and unplug a component without rebooting? I’m sure whoever first thought of the idea and voiced it was deemed silly by his peers.
The cost of SATA is cheaper. You, of course, can check that yourself.
Reduced wire count and the reduced bulk of SATA is a major advantage, especially for those that like to “get into” their computer. The wire count went from 80 to 7, a great reduction in my opinion. No longer does a hardware tech/enthusiast have to deal with the ribbon connector from a hard drive.
The speed of the data transfer is another advantage SATA has over PATA. The transfer speed of PATA was 133.5 MB/s, while the SATA 150 offered us 150 MB/s; now there is SATA 600 which offers 600 MB/s. A great improvement in technology.
Lastly, the SATA protocol is another great advantage SATA provides and improvement in technology. I won’t discuss the topology, SATA uses a point-to-point architecture, I want to mention the encoding. The logic encoding known as 8b/10b encoding.
This scheme eliminates the need to send a separate clock signal with the data stream. The stream itself contains necessary synchronization information that allows for SATA host/drive to extract clocking. Use of 8b/10b encoding means the stream is also DC-balanced, which allows the signals to be AC-coupled. Taken from wikipedia.
So, I think SATA was a great advancement in technology offering, like I said earlier, ease of functionality (reduced cable bulk), higher transfer speeds, hot-swapping, cost, and SATA’s encoding.
What are some advancements that stand out to you TR?
