The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) group announced on Wednesday that it has finalized the third generation of the SATA standard now known as SATA 3.0.

In a joint release (PDF) from Portland, OR and Taipei, Taiwan, SATA-IO president Knut Grimsrud intimated the need for a faster disk interface. “The SATA Revision 3.0 specification doubles the maximum transfer speed enabled by technology, paving the way for a new generation of faster SATA products,” he said.

Aside from doubling the throughput of the SATA interface to 6.0Gbps (600MB/s), the new standard has brought Native Command Queuing (NCQ) up to version 2. NCQ 2.0 is expected to improve disk performance in streaming media operations by guaranteeing a certain fixed data rate that preempts other disk activity.

SATA 3.0 also offers a new low insertion force (LIF) connector for 1.8″ drives and has established the parameters for a low-profile adapter for 7mm optical drives that have begun appearing in ultra-thin notebooks.

The SATA group has outlined that products using the new standard shall be branded as “SATA 6Gb/s” as opposed to “SATA-III” or “SATA 3.0″ which will no doubt proliferate anyhow.