Advanced Host Controller Interface

The Advanced Host Controller Interface ( AHCI ) is an open interface standard for Serial ATA controller. It allows you to communicate with controllers via software.

Using the freely available specification to standardize the development of drivers for Serial ATA devices and thus greatly simplified. So must for motherboards that supports their controller AHCI, no special Serial ATA driver more are being developed. Instead, only an available, uniform AHCI driver is required for full support for devices such as hard disks.

The AHCI specification was developed by a working group led by Intel and published in 2004.

Application

Is the BIOS setting SATA Configuration set for motherboards to AHCI, the connected hard drives with support for Native Command Queuing ( NCQ) to be addressed. As a result of pending commands are resorted to run it in the optimal order. In most cases this increases the throughput of the disk by a few percent at multiple parallel programs with many scattered accesses.

Operating systems and compatibility

Many Unix -based operating systems such as Linux allow changing the setting in the BIOS after installation.

Must In Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, if the system was installed in IDE mode, to only one key in the Windows registry are changed, otherwise a blue screen occurs. Windows XP does not natively AHCI, but it may already during installation ( pressing F6 and the driver on a disk ) can be activated. If Windows XP is installed in IDE mode, the driver can be somewhat complicated installed afterwards. For Windows 2000 AHCI driver can also be installed and used on the above F6 method.

Furthermore, there is the possibility ( to Utilities nLite or Isobuster ) integrate the AHCI driver using a technique called slipstreaming the installation media in Windows 2000 and XP. This causes Windows to load the correct drivers to coincide with the setup to start the installation. This method is particularly suitable for systems without built-in floppy drive, because Windows 2000 and XP are looking at the F6 method the driver files only under the drive letter A, which corresponds to the 3.5 " floppy disk drive, in the installation CDs with XP SP3, the drivers are also loaded from a USB floppy drive.

Also for eComStation ( the development of IBM's OS / 2) there exists a AHCI driver.

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