The new standards have been finalised for the next generation of storage drives, with the launch of SATA 3.2 and SATA Express.

SATA-IO, the group in charge of maintaining the SATA specification, has announced the latest revision 3. has been finalized, bringing with it SATA Express, which melds SATA and PCI Express for bandwidth of up to 2 GB/s, giving high-speed solid state drives the protocol support they sorely need.

SATA Express uses two lanes of PCI Express 3.0 for faster, typically solid-state drives that require up to 2 GB/s of bandwidth, or standard SATA protocols for slower drives. Traditionally PCIe has been held-over for use with graphics cards, expansions cards and some high-end storage only, now with SATA Express both technologies can coexist more fluently.

Other improvements with revision 3.2 include using the M.2 form factor, also the Universal Storage Module (USM) which allows more flexible storage in ultra-mobile devices. The ‘DevSleep’ protocol has been included too, which allows for a near-complete shutdown to save power, but rapid re-starting times as well.

It will take time for manufacturers to begin to support the updates in their products’ software and hardware designs. Commentors already say the update should go a long way to improving the stability of new solid-state storage media. More details are available at the SATA-IO website.