The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) consortium on Tuesday released the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification, which doubles the transfer speeds of the current SATA II interface to 6Gbps and adds multimedia application support. The SATA 3 specification is backwards compatible with the earlier version and retains its low-power requirements. Other changes include a new Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming to better accommodate bandwidth-intensive audio and video applications.

A new NCQ Management feature is meant to optimize performance by allowing host processing and management of outstanding NCQ commands. The new standard also includes a new small Low Insertion Force (LIF) connector for compact 1.8-inch storage devices, including solid state drives (SSDs). At the same time, there is a connector for 7mm optical disk drives found in today's thin and light notebooks.

SATA-IO will demonstrate the SATA Revision 3.0 specification at Computex Taipei at the start of June. [via MarketWatch]