Serial ATA has already gained a good grip of the harddrive market and Parallel ATA is about to be phased out. The market for optical units is quite different though, here very few units actually use the SATA interface and often company launch new units with the older PATA interface. Many of us would’ve been happy if the PATA cables would just roll up and die and it seems our dream is about to come true. SATA-based optical units are becoming more and more common and will more or less be the standard in the middle of next year. Intel’s chipset plans where there number of PATA controllers have been drastically reduced is also one of the reasons. We welcome this development and hopes that the PATA cables disappears as soon as possible.
