Design and implementation of open-source SATA III core for Stratix V FPGAs

SATA is the de-facto standard computer interface that connects a host, typically a computing device, to a persistent storage device, such as a hard drive or solid-state drive. In order for FPGA-based designs to be able to leverage the variety of persistent storage devices, a SATA core is needed. Over time, the SATA standard has been revised to provide greater bandwidth, with SATA III being the newest version of the standard. In this paper, we are the first to present a SATA III core designed for Altera Stratix V FPGAs. Our implementation is written using Verilog, and tested using an industry-standard SATA protocol analyzer. We evaluate the performance of our SATA core by measuring the throughput of random and sequential read and write operations using various hard drives and solid-state drives. In addition, we compare the complexity of our SATA III core implementation with those of the older SATA I and II open-source implementations, and show that SATA III is still feasible, using only about 11% of Stratix V FPGA resources.