The
ahcisata driver supports SATA controllers compliant with the Serial ATA Advanced Host Controller Interface Revision 1.0 or 1.1 specification, and provides the interface to the hardware for the
ata(4) driver.
The
ahcisata driver will only attach if the controller has been put in AHCI mode by the BIOS; if the controller is in pciide-compatible mode, it will be handled by the appropriate driver (
piixide(4) for Intel AHCI controllers).