Native Command Queuing (NCQ) is a technology designed to increase performance of SATA hard disks on computers. It can do this under certain situations by allowing the individual hard disk to internally optimize the order in which it executes the read and write requests it received. This can reduce the amount of unnecessary drive head movement and resulting in better performance (and slightly decreased wear of the drive) for workloads where multiple read/write requests are outstanding at the same time. This situation most often occurs in server-type applications. However, the current (as of 2004) technology actually slows down HD access in certain applications, like games and sequential reads and writes, because of the added latency induced by NCQ logic.