SPRUIE9D May 2017 – May 2024 DRA74P , DRA75P , DRA76P , DRA77P
The SATA core supports the AHCI hardware mechanism, which provides the user software with a suitable HBA register interface to manage SATA interface operations. Generally, the AHCI introduces a system memory structure that includes some generic control and status area and a list of command entries (which can have a depth from 1 up to 32 entries) assigned per HBA port. Each of the command list entries contains information necessary to program a SATA device and pointers to data transfer descriptors.
The AHCI mode of operation disregards the master/slave communication model. A certain SATA AHCI host controller port establishes a point-to-point connectivity with only a single SATA peripheral device at a time, which is always a master device.