SAS | Serial Attached SCSI. A serial,   | 
  | leverages the proven SCSI protocol set. The SAS interface provides improved  | 
  | performance, simplified cabling, smaller connections, lower pin count, and lower  | 
  | power requirements when compared to parallel SCSI. SAS controllers leverage a  | 
  | common electrical and physical connection interface that is compatible with Serial  | 
  | ATA. The SAS controllers support the ANSI Serial Attached SCSI standard, version  | 
  | 1.0. In addition, the controller supports the Serial ATA (SATA) protocol defined by  | 
  | the Serial ATA specification, version 1.0a. Each port on the SAS RAID controller  | 
  | supports SAS and SATA devices.  | 
SAS Device | Any device that conforms to the SAS standard and is attached to the SAS bus by a  | 
  | SAS cable. This includes SAS storage adapters (host adapters) and SAS peripherals.  | 
Intel® RAID Controller SASMF8I Hardware Guide | 18  |