Home » Full Forms » Computer Acronyms/Abbreviations

What is the full form of AHCI?

Full form of AHCI: Here, we are going to learn what does AHCI stands for? AHCI – which is an abbreviation of "Advanced Host Controller Interface" in Computer Acronyms/Abbreviations, etc.
Submitted by Anushree Goswami, on March 23, 2020

AHCI: Advanced Host Controller Interface

AHCI is an abbreviation of the "Advanced Host Controller Interface".

It is a procedural and technological standard described by Intel that details the operation of Serial ATA (SATA) host controllers in a non-execution detailed approach in its motherboard chipsets.

The arrangement of the design illustrates a system memory format for computer hardware sellers to swap data among host system memory and connected storage devices. AHCI provides software developers and hardware designers a standard technique for detecting, configuring, and programming SATA/AHCI adapters. AHCI is unrelated and disparate from the SATA 3 Gbit/s standard, even if it reveals SATA's advanced abilities like hot swapping and native command queuing, such that host systems can make use of them. In the case of current solid-state drives, the interface has been outdated by NVMe.

As of December 2019, the existing version of the design is 1.3.1.

Operating system support

AHCI is supported unconventionally on:

Windows Vista and afterward,
Linux-based operating systems (since version 2.6.19 of the kernel),
OpenBSD (since version 4.1),
NetBSD (since version 4.0),
FreeBSD (since version 8.0),
MacOS,
EComStation (since version 2.1),
Solaris 10 (since version 8/07).

DragonFlyBSD based its AHCI execution on OpenBSD's and supplemented extensive features such as port multiplier support. Older versions of operating systems have need of hardware-specific drivers in order to support AHCI. Windows XP and older versions do not give AHCI support unconventionally.

System drive boot issues

Several operating systems, particularly Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, do not arrange and organize themselves to install the AHCI driver upon boot if the SATA controller was not in AHCI mode at the duration when the operating system was installed. Even if this is a without difficulty rectifiable state of the situation, it stays a continuing subject of matter with the AHCI standard.
The most widespread and established indicator for an operating system (or systems) that are installed in IDE mode (the mode which are in several BIOS firmware executions or else known as 'Combined IDE mode'), is that the system drive normally is unsuccessful to boot, with a subsequent resulting error message, if the SATA controller (in BIOS) is involuntarily switched to AHCI mode after OS installation.
In Microsoft Windows, the indicator is a boot loop that starts with a Blue Screen error, if not rectified - and during no error of the Windows OS.