Accredited Standards Committee*
InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS)
Doc. No.: T10/06-021r0
Date: December 12, 2005
Reply to: John Lohmeyer
To: T10 Membership
From: John Lohmeyer and Ralph Weber
Subject: SAT Working Group Meeting -- December 12, 2005
Las Vegas, NV
Agenda
1. Opening Remarks
2. Approval of Agenda
3. Attendance and Membership
4. Old Business
4.1 SAT Work Items List (06-004r0) [Sheffield]
4.2 SAT - SEND DIAGNOSTIC Command and Self Test Results (05-245r3)
[Bellamy]
5. New Business
5.1 SAT: I_T Nexus Loss (06-001r0) [Sheffield]
5.2 SAT - Make ATA Status Return Descriptor optional (06-005r0) [Sheffield]
5.3 SAT: TEST UNIT READY Translation (06-008r0) [Overby]
5.4 SAT Clarify error handling for PIO data-in commands (06-020r1)
[Elliott]
6. Review of (SAT) Working Draft
7. Review of Recommendations
8. Meeting Schedule
9. Adjournment
Results of Meeting
1. Opening Remarks
John Lohmeyer called the meeting to order at 0900 December 12, 2005. John
thanked Dan Colegrove of Hitachi for hosting the meeting. As is customary, the
people attending introduced themselves.
2. Approval of Agenda
The draft agenda was approved without revision.
3. Attendance and Membership
Attendance at working group meetings does not count toward minimum attendance
requirements for T10 membership. Working group meetings are open to any
person or organization directly and materially affected by T10's scope of
work. The following people attended the meeting:
Name S Organization
------------------------------------ -- ------------------------------------
Mr. Ron Roberts A Broadcom Corp.
Mr. Ralph O. Weber P ENDL Texas
Mr. Wayne Bellamy V Hewlett Packard Co.
Mr. Dan Colegrove P Hitachi Global Storage Tech.
Mr. Robert Sheffield P Intel Corp.
Mr. John Lohmeyer P LSI Logic Corp.
Mr. Frank Shu V Microsoft
Mr. Jim Hatfield V Seagate Technology
Mr. William Martin P Sierra Logic, Inc.
Mr. Curtis Stevens P Western Digital
10 People Present
Status Key: P - Principal
A,A# - Alternate
AV - Advisory Member
L - Liaison
V - Visitor
4. Old Business
4.1 SAT Work Items List (06-004r0) [Sheffield]
Bob Sheffield reviewed the current work items list (06-004r0). Bob noted that
SAT does not yet describe the use of READ LOG EXT for error recovery on NCQ
commands. The group discussed covering the issue in a January proposal or as a
Letter Ballot comment.
Bob noted that all SAT work items of record have been completed. He stated
that the four proposals recommended today will be provisionally integrated in
SAT revision 7a which will be available in time for the January meeting.
Changes approved during the Working Draft review (see agenda item 6), if any,
also will be incorporated in the provisional SAT revision 7a.
4.2 SAT - SEND DIAGNOSTIC Command and Self Test Results (05-245r3) [Bellamy]
Wayne Bellamy reviewed the latest revision of his proposal to map SEND
DIAGNOSTIC into ATA actions (05-245r3). Failure to incorporate default
selftest changes agreed upon in November bothered Bill Martin because his
company had already implemented reading LBA 0, reading the highest LBA, and
reading a random LBA in the middle. The method for determining the current
device temperature needed to be inclusive of all the listed steps, and
changing the 'or' on the list to an 'and' was sufficient to achieve this
result.
Wayne agreed to revise the proposal. Wayne Bellamy moved that 05-245r4 (r3 as
modified) be recommended for inclusion in SAT. Bob Sheffield seconded the
motion. In the absence of any objections, the motion passed unanimously.
5. New Business
5.1 SAT: I_T Nexus Loss (06-001r0) [Sheffield]
Bob Sheffield presented a proposal to integrate the SAS-2 handling for I_T
Nexus handling into SAT (06-001r0). Concerns were raised about whether the
proposal is ahead of its time because the reference is SAS-2 and ATA mentions
I_T Nexus Loss only in draft ATA-8 documents which may or may not continue to
contain such information.
To limit the scope of the proposal, the new subclause title was changed to
SAM-3 I_T nexus loss. Other minor editorial corrections were also requested.
Bob Sheffield moved that 06-001r1 (r0 as modified) be recommended for
inclusion in SAT. Ron Roberts seconded the motion. In the absence of any
objections, the motion passed unanimously.
5.2 SAT - Make ATA Status Return Descriptor optional (06-005r0) [Sheffield]
Bob Sheffield presented a proposal to make use of the ATA Status Return
descriptor optional (06-005r0). Both Curtis Stevens and Jim Hatfield objected
to the change on the grounds that some ATA commands require use of the ATA
Status Return descriptor function to detect whether a command ultimately
finished.
Ralph Weber suggested that the lack of resources which motivated the proposal
should not affect the handling of the command that retrieves the status.
Instead, commands that might need the status saved should be blocked with Busy
status.
Bob asked for a straw poll on whether efforts should be made to modify the
proposal to make it acceptable to the majority of those present. The straw
poll did not favor continued work on the proposal 3:5.
Bob withdrew the proposal.
5.3 SAT: TEST UNIT READY Translation (06-008r0) [Overby]
On behalf of the absent Mark Overby, Bob Sheffield presented a proposal to
update the definition of the Test Unit Ready command (06-008r0). Concerns were
raised regarding the content and ordering of the list of commands the SATL is
required to send. The absence of a CHECK POWER MODE command was a problem
because its use appears SAT revision 7.
The group found 06-008r0 sufficiently unsatisfactory to warrant development of
a completely new proposal (06-022r0 be
recommended for inclusion in SAT. Ron Roberts seconded the motion. The motion
passed 6:0:2.
5.4 SAT Clarify error handling for PIO data-in commands (06-020r1) [Elliott]
Wayne Bellamy presented a proposal to clarify the handling of errors that
occur during transmission of the last DRQ block (06-020r0). The proposal's
claim that most commands affected by these conditions include error detecting
checksums was contested by Jim Hatfield. Only the commands listed in the
proposal have such checksums, most others do not.
Some present suggested that PIO usage be prohibited in SAT. Dan Colegrove
argued that ATA drives perform billions of commands in PIO mode with almost no
errors detected, which is why T13 has never taken steps to change the
behavior. Dan also noted the last block is protected even if the status is
sent first, because the transfer quality is the same throughout the entire
transfer operation. That is, all data is checked as it is placed into the
drive's buffer and none is checked as it is transferred to the host.
Because the proposed changed failed to address the full breadth of the problem
described in the proposal overview, the group decided to reduce the changes to
exactly the IDENTIFY DEVICE, IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE, SMART READ DATA, and READ
LOG EXT commands.
Ralph Weber moved that 06-020r1 (r0 as modified) be recommended for inclusion
in SAT. Wayne Bellamy seconded the motion. In the absence of any objections,
the motion passed unanimously.
6. Review of (SAT) Working Draft
Bob Sheffield presented several issues raised by Rob Elliott in an e-mail
message. Rob suggested adding an ordering priority to table 33 to improve
performance. The group concluded that the purpose of SAT was to define
interoperable implementations, not to define high-performance implementations.
Jim Hatfield noted that performance issues are complex and should not be baked
into the SAT standard. Wayne Bellamy noted that the HP preference was for
avoiding use of PIO if at all possible. The group recommended that HP write
such preferences into their purchase specifications since the SAT standard
needs to be silent on the subject.
Bob Sheffield led a review of revision 7 of the working draft.
How best to reference SATA information in SATA-IO documents was discussed. The
choices were complex and the possibility was discussed that references would
need to be revised during the SAT Letter Ballot. The SAT functional protocol
reference model figure was updated. The translation for unit attention
conditions was reviewed with an eye toward the fact that ATA has no
notifications for asynchronous conditions.
7. Review of Recommendations
The following items were recommended to the plenary for inclusion into SAT:
05-245r4 (SEND DIAGNOSTIC Command and Self Test Results) [Bellamy]
06-001r1 (I_T Nexus Loss) [Sheffield]
06-022r0 (Rewrite TEST UNIT READY) [Sheffield]
06-020r1 (Clarify error handling for PIO data-in commands) [Elliott/Weber]
8. Meeting Schedule
A SAT Working Group meeting is scheduled for:
Tuesday January 10, 2006 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Phoenix, AZ at the
Embassy Suites Hotel Phoenix - Scottsdale, hosted by Intel.
9. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 1755 December 12, 2005.