Hard disks could have infinite capacity and instant read and write speeds, and still wouldn’t be of any use without some way to communicate with the rest of the computer system, which is the job of the interface. But simply providing a path for communications isn’t enough. The interface also has to be fast enough to keep up with the drive. Otherwise it would be a bottleneck that prevented increases in hard disk performance from making any difference. This need for the interface to stay out of the way is why interface speed matters, and why interfaces keep getting faster as hard disk performance improves.
Up until a few years ago there were only two interfaces that mattered for most purposes: ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) and SCSI (Small Computer System Interface). Today, there are three more: USB (Universal Serial Bus), IEEE 1394, and Fibre Channel, with SATA (Serial ATA) on the near horizon.
At the enterprise level–where NAS (Network Attached Storage) and SANs (Storage Area Networks) are increasingly more important than DAS (direct attached storage; Read: a hard disk in a computer)–iSCSI (Internet SCSI) and InfiniBand are looming as key alternatives to fibre channel as fabrics for enterprise storage needs. (A fabric consists of the hubs, switches, and software that tie the pieces together.) Here is a quick look at future of interfaces and fabrics, with an emphasis on the interfaces, and on the desktop.
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