Serial Attached SCSI

What Does Serial Attached SCSI Mean?

Serial attached SCSI (SAS) is a type of serial transmission protocol put into hardware components, many of which are part of larger or more distributed systems. This technology is largely used in connecting data storage devices.

Techopedia Explains Serial Attached SCSI

The idea of serial attached SCSI progressed from the dominant method of parallel SCSI over the years. While serial SCSI was initially somewhat slower, advances have meant that SAS has become an efficient way to manage data transmissions – benefits include lack of termination issues and the elimination of clock skew, as well as a high general transfer speed. In fact, SAS is also seen to be faster than SATA systems.

It is a point-to-point architecture where each device has a dedicated link to the initiator. This provides the benefits in terms of speed and efficiency.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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