According to a press release, Seagate will have its Pulsar.2 enterprise SSDs with a 12Gb/s SAS on display. The company said that the devices target cloud services and other enterprise applications "throughout all tiers of data storage." Seagate stressed that the interface will be initially integrated with SSDs to take advantage of "the high performance benefits of SSDs", but the technology is also compatible for use in higher-capacity enterprise hard drives. There was no announcement when 12 Gb/s HDDs will become available, but this seems to be a matter of when, not if.

Seagate noted that its 12 Gb/s implementation is "fully compatible with controllers and other technologies from PMC-Sierra and LSI." The company expects the 12Gb/s SAS standard to be finalized by the end of this year. First drives will be available sometime in 2013, while volume availability is predicted for H2 2013.

HGST announced last week that it will be demonstrating 12 Gb/s drives at the SCSI Trade Association’s Technical Showcase.