Question on SATA Hotplug, NCQ and Port Multiplier support

[Søren Schmidt]

Sean Thomson wrote:
> Howdy Folks,
>  
> I'm trying to find out what the current/future support for SATA hotplug, NCQ, and Port Multiplier is. Specifically, I'm tied to intel's ICH9 SATA controller and pegged to implement the features if they aren't planned or available. That last part is up in the air, pending what I find out and how long it'll take.
>  
> After poking around the mailing list, I found that Soren had mentioned that he is working on NCQ and I can really only find references to hot plug in the context of RAID. Is hot plug generally supported for controllers that support it? From experience in another OS, port multiplier was not even on the radar as nobody was asking for it, so I'm guessing that the level of interest is just as low here.
>  
> Anyway, any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
>   
SATA hotplug/hotremoval is implemented for all chips I have access to 
and that supports it.

NCQ is planned and in the works but not for general consumption yet.
Port multipliers, well, I have had lots of trouble even locating someone 
that actually has one, but a couble of days ago I got the word from one 
of our supporting vendors that an evalution version should be in the 
mail, more to follow on that as things unfold.

Both NCQ and portmultipliers needs support from the chipset, so it 
depends on those features being present and that I can get docs on how 
its done. Docs are lacking here as usual, but at least chips that does 
AHCI (Intel, JMicron and VIA) and Promise chips will be supported.

-Søren