Re:SerialATA doesn't seem very advanced (Score 1)

Ah, it isn't the distance that is important, but the ability of the signalling layer to have external quality connectors, and EMI tolerances. While differential, you still have to worry about EMI creation. Further, 1m is the total distance, without repeaters and external termination, that is 1m from the chip to the disks chip, or close to it. Most SCSI connectors are run almost a foot across a card/mb, there goes one foot. Then you account for the fact that there is probably another 6" lost going to the device via connectors, which btw more than 2 of lower your distance to around 2 feet. Once you add up all the extra impediance changes and the board run lenghts, you really have between 1 foot an 18 inchs of external connect, assuming a cable which is rated for out of box connections and some form of connector specificaion.

Given that the physical layer of sATA is very similar to that of FC, there is no reason that the signals could not be boosted to do 15ms though. The big question is what would you hook up external, with out a hub of some kind, which the sATA 1.0 spec most definitely does not address, there is only the possability for one external device.