Intel Issues Advanced Host Controller Interface Specification; Spec Release Enables Production Shipment of AHCI Serial ATA Discrete Host Controllers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2003--Broad adoption of the advanced features of Serial ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) was given a boost today with Intel Corporation's release of the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) v0.95 specification. The final specification is expected to be released in early 2004; the v0.95 spec enables production shipment of AHCI Serial ATA discrete host controllers that could hit the market by year's end.

AHCI is developed by an industry group chaired by Intel. The AHCI Contributor Group, also announced today, consists of AMD, Dell, Marvell, Maxtor, Microsoft Corp., Red Hat, Seagate and StorageGear in addition to Intel.

AHCI provides a standard interface to system driver/OS software for discovering and implementing such advanced SATA features as command queuing, hot plug and power management. AHCI-based platforms improve the performance of the storage sub-system significantly and advances adoption of AHCI-based host bus adaptors (HBAs) and software in the PC platform.

"The development of AHCI has strong industry momentum," said Thomas Loza, Intel technology initiatives manager. "We believe this is a significant step in enabling the enhanced benefits of the SATA extensions."

As Intel and members of the AHCI Contributor group work to define AHCI, gearing up for integration of AHCI in chipsets in 2004, Microsoft encourages early adoption of the new specification.

"Microsoft is pleased to be a member of the AHCI Contributor group and a key contributor to the development of the AHCI specification," said Bob Rinne, director of Windows Core Technologies at Microsoft Corp. "We believe the industry will benefit from a standard interface for SATA controllers and plan to include a driver for AHCI in the next version of Windows."

This milestone is among the next steps toward broad deployment of 1.5 Gb/s Serial ATA technology, the storage interconnect that replaces older parallel ATA, and 1.5 Gb/s products with features defined under the enhancements specification of Serial ATA II. Serial ATA II is an enhancement spec of Serial ATA, which will be used to connect such internal storage devices as hard disks, DVDs and CD-R/Ws to the motherboard in desktop and mobile PCs, cost-sensitive servers and networked storage. These features are expected to build on the momentum of Serial ATA 1.0 in those segments.

The Serial ATA 1.0 spec was released in August 2001, and the final Serial ATA II enhancement spec was announced in October 2002.

Requests for the AHCI contributor agreement can be directed to sata_ahci@intel.com.

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

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CONTACT: Intel Corporation
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