advanced host controller interface (SATA) (AHCI)

Advanced HostController Interface (AHCI) is an open standard for controller interfaces with Serial ATA( SATA). It was developed by Intel in 2004 and is used by most hard disk manufacturers. AHCI operates at higher data rates than Integrated Drive Electronics( IDE).

The AHCI specifications describe the interface between the system software and the host controller. They are used by system developers for the development of hardware components and device drivers. AHCI supports hot-swapping and native command queuing( NCQ). Hot-swapping allows components to be hot-swapped, and NCQ queuescommands to increase the read/ write speed of hard disk drives. Thanks to AHCI, controllers and drivers can be unified and work with SATA drives from other manufacturers.

The successor technology to Advanced Host Controller Interface is Non-Volatile Memory Express( NVMe), which was released in 2011.