Serial ATA is the next-generation internal storage protocol, designed to replace parallel ATA technology. The Serial ATA-1 standard supports up to 150MBytes/sec, with a roadmap already planned for 300MBytes/sec and as high as 600MBytes/sec for the next stage.
The key benefits of Serial ATA are: Increased reliability due to the elimination of cross-talk, hot-swap support, point-to-point usage.
Especially for engineers struggling with BIOS settings and configuring master/slave and primary/secondary, this last advantage is a welcome change.