Parallel ATA cables have a maximum allowable length of 18 in (457 mm). After the introduction of SATA in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations are still in common informal use, in particular Extended IDE (EIDE) and Ultra ATA (UATA). The ATA interface itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital's original Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. The Parallel ATA standard is the result of a long history of incremental technical development, which began with the original AT Attachment interface, developed for use in early PC AT equipment. It uses the underlying AT Attachment (ATA) and AT Attachment Packet Interface ( ATAPI) standards. The standard is maintained by the X3/ INCITS committee. The connection is used for storage devices such as hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, optical disc drives, and tape drives in computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. Parallel ATA ( PATA), originally AT Attachment, also known as IDE, is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. Two ATA motherboard sockets above, with an ATA connector below