Re: Playing with SATA NCQ

From: Jeff Garzik
Date: Sun May 29 2005 - 12:02:00 EST


Erik Slagter wrote:
On Sun, 2005-05-29 at 12:34 -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:

Now, this patch is not complete. It should work and work well, but error
handling isn't really tested or finished yet (by any stretch of the
imagination). So don't use this on a production machine, it _should_ be
safe to use on your test boxes and for-fun workstations though (I run it
here...). I have tested on ich6 and ich7 generation ahci, and with
Maxtor and Seagate drives.

Is this supposed to work on ICH7 in legacy mode as well?

Nope. ata_piix does not support NCQ (because the h/w doesn't support).


If I understand this correctly: NCQ does not work on ICH7 in native mode
(using ata_piix) because in this mode there is no NCQ available, right?

To be more specific, there are these modes:

legacy mode no NCQ
combined mode no NCQ
native mode no NCQ
AHCI mode NCQ


Another question: is there a fundamental problem to have the ICH6/7
enabled AHCI mode by the kernel instead of the BIOS? I know some BIOSes
don't offer the choice to enable AHCI (like mine :-().

Not a problem. You just don't get to use AHCI and such.


Huh?

My question was if there is a fundamental reason why the AHCI mode of
the ICH6/7 must be enabled by the BIOS, is there a reason why the kernel
doesn't do it, or can't do it?

The BIOS sets up PCI resources necessary to use AHCI mode.

Jeff


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