It's very probable that Have you ever heard of the SATA Express connector?. Over the years, the storage segment has evolved remarkably, mainly with the presence of SSDs. Therefore, this term that we have mentioned began to be known among many users of the operating system. Although there are many users who do not know precisely what it is about.
Next we show you more about SATA Express and its status this technology today. Since the many changes that have occurred in this time have had a clear influence on him.
What is SATA Express?
SATA Express is a high speed connection interface which is based on SATA (Serial ATA) technology. It is compatible with devices of this type and with PCI Express. It is an interface that we regularly know as SATAe, which you have probably seen on occasion. Although it is important to mention that it is not something to be confused with eSATA. The latter are intended for external drives. So they are different.
SATA Express hit the market in 2014 as SATA 3.2, is the name by which many may know it. It came with the intention of providing the ability to support PCIe devices. For this case, this new interface had the capacity to achieve a speed of 16 GB / s, which is equivalent to 1.97 GB / s. Therefore, it significantly outperformed SATA 3.0 for this purpose. An important advance, therefore.
Because of this, the SATA designers found that doubling the speed on the basic interface was too expensive and which also resulted in energy consumption too old. Therefore, they were forced to look for other solutions. This is what they achieved by adapting the data transmission protocol to a new interface, based on PCI-Express. Thus, higher speeds are achieved, with reduced energy consumption. The desired combination for this purpose.
This is why SATA Express can work with the AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) communication protocol, but also with the NVMe logical interface. This is something that enables you to get a lot out of PCIe storage drives. At the same time, it takes care of supporting older computers with AHCI.
SATA Express Features
The highlight of SATA Express is that can support PCI Express and SATA. So it is a much more versatile option for this purpose for users. This is possible thanks to the connection through PCI Express 2.0 and 3.0 buses or through the SATA 3.0 ports connected to each other with a power connector.
Devices that connect via the first method (PCIe) will have a direct connection between the motherboard and the storage drive. Therefore, no need to use an additional layer with which to make these connection protocols compatible. It is the main advantage that SATA Express gives us. It makes this procedure much easier.
Although it provides some clear benefits, plus there are some other negatives on SATA Express. Even though it offers us the support for these two protocols, only both can be connected simultaneously. This means that the user who connects a SATA hard disk to his computer, will see how the computer with which he is connected works, if it is the PCIe only with that and if it is the SATA, only with that.
Why is SATA Express not used?
Despite the advantages it has, today we can see that SATA Express is not used much. The main reason is that there is another interface that has stolen the limelight, which is M.2. It is an interface that was seen as a substitute, and that little by little is meeting these expectations.
The main difference is that M.2 does not have the limitations that we find in the case of SATA Express. For this reason, most manufacturers today opt for this option.
