[Top]

UNH-IOL SATA Consortium membership is $19,000 per year. There is no extra charge for submitting multiple products for multiple rounds of testing. All test services are included in the yearly membership fee. The only exception to this is overtime testing, when you require test results quickly. Overtime testing will be performed outside of normal business hours.

[Top]

Perhaps the primary financial benefit of the SATA Consortium lies in the assembly and maintenance of a SATA device interoperability test bed, which is a continually updated collection of representative products from all participating members. The mutually beneficial aspects of having a continuously available reference interoperability test bed which companies can use to verify proper operation of their new SATA products is the single most beneficial aspect of the Consortium. Because of the group nature of the consortium, the reference test bed can be built at a significantly lower cost per member than what it would cost for any single member to attempt to build the same caliber test bed on its own (provided it were even possible to get access to such a large collection of pre-release products, which isn't the case in the early stages of any new technology).

Also, the physical and phy layer conformance test services, which are included as part of a full consortium membership, provide an additional cost-savings to vendors who do not wish to spend internal resources to develop this testing on their own. Members can benefit from the IOL expertise that has already been developed in these areas, and eliminate time spent 'reinventing the wheel' internally. Plus, members get the added benefit of knowing that the test procedures and methodologies used have been reviewed and accepted by the member community, thus decreasing the potential for uncertainty in the interpretation of various aspects of the standard, or implementation of the tests.

Furthermore, because the IOL does not require members to physically be present at the lab during scheduled testing (though attendance is certainly welcome), members save additionally in both travel expenses, and the work time that is reclaimed by not having to travel to an off-site facility for testing, as is the case with a plugfest. Members get plugfest-level testing without the travel costs, and time spent away from work.

For a general list of benefits of joining an IOL consortium, see our our Benefits Page.

[Top]

Members of the UNH-IOL SATA Consortium must schedule testing using our Request for Testing Page, using the calendar of testing availablity found on our Calendar Page. Testing reservations are typically made in 1-week blocks. Members may request any available testing week, which will be separately verified and confirmed by UNH-IOL via email.

Test weeks are reserved on a first-come, first served basis. Members in good standing may have, at most, one active reservation per membership at any given point in time. In other words, additional weeks may not be reserved until the currently reserved week has been used. (Requests for additional weeks may be submitted anytime after 5PM EST Friday of their currently scheduled testing week.) This allows for fair access to all consortium members.

The number of weeks that any one member may use in one year is limited only by the number of total consortium members, and the overall frequency of requests.

For cases where members wish to bypass the existing scheduling mechanism when time-critical services are required, an Overtime testing service is also available. For more information regarding Overtime testing, see the FAQ entry,"What is Overtime testing, and how much does it cost?"

For cases where increased volume/throughput of testing is needed, Members are also allowed to purchase multiple memberships in the same consortium, where each membership will allow an additional testing week to be reserved at a time (e.g., two memberships = up to two weeks reserved at any given time.)

Members of the UNH-IOL SATA Consoritum are allowed to schedule up to two devices per week for SATA-IO testing or one device per week for UNH-IOL testing. SATA-IO testing includes Phy, Digital, Interop, and Mechanical testing on both devices. UNH-IOL testing is defined as one UNH-IOL developed test suite.

[Top]

As of February 2008, the UNH-IOL has been approved by the SATA-IO as a certified test lab for the R1.0, R1.1, R1.2, R1.3, and R1.4 SATA-IO Interoperability Programs.

[Top]

The UNH-IOL has been certified to perform the SATA-IO Phy, Digital, Mechanical, and System Interoperability tests on SATA Hosts and Devices. (More information on these tests, and the SATA-IO Interoperability Program in general, can be found on the SATA-IO website.)

In addition to the SATA-IO Interoperability Program tests, the UNH-IOL also offers additional test suites that extend beyond the SATA-IO Interoperability Program requirements, and provide further coverage of the SATA v2.6 spec. More information about these test suites can be found on our Test Suites page.

[Top]

Members of the UNH-IOL SATA Consortium who have urgent testing requirments may request Overtime testing, for an additional per-product testing fee. Overtime testing is typically performed during a weekend slot, but is scheduled using the same procedure as regular testing (online request form, calendar, etc.) Members may have up to one Overtime slot scheduled in addition to one standard weekly testing slot (i.e., reservations for one Overtime and one regular weekly slot can exist concurrently under a single membership).

Overtime testing requests are treated on a case-by-case basis, and are subject to the availability of lab resources and personnel.

Overtime testing services in the SATA Consortium consist of one of the following options (per Overtime slot):

• One UNH-IOL test suite performed on one product (for $1500)
• SATA-IO Interop Program (i.e., Logo) testing performed on one product (for $1500)
• SATA-IO Logo testing performed on two products (for $3000)

(Note: SATA-IO Logo testing includes the complete set of Phy, Digital, Interop, and Mechanical testing required for Integrator's List eligibility.)

Additional details regarding the Overtime testing policy can be found in Section 4.2.3.2 of the SATA Consortium Charter Document.

[Top]

As of March 2009, the UNH-IOL SATA consortium has listed nearly 100 devices on the SATA-IO Integrators List.