sata 3

AMD and Seagate demonstrate in New Orleans the next-generation Serial ATA specification with read transfers out of the driver buffer hitting 589MB/s. The new specification, SATA 6Gbps, will offer twice the disk-to-host bandwidth of the existing 3Gbps Serial ATA standard.

Besides the improvement in bandwidth, SATA III 6Gbps offers full backwards compatibility with the earlier 3Gbps & 1.5Gbps standards, including the same cable and connector specifications. The new power management allows the platform to instantaneously power on & off the 6Gbps SATA 3 interface, unlike the always-on power state in current SATA 2 HDD.

More about this [anandtech.com]