SATA controller cards

Michael K. Johnson johnsonm at redhat.com
Wed Dec 24 14:37:27 UTC 2003


On Tue, Dec 23, 2003 at 11:28:02AM -0800, Samuel Flory wrote:
> Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
> >3w driver doesn't use the new LiNUX libata subsystem.
> 
>   And this is a bad thing?

In this case, no.

The point of libata is to have shared code (the "lib" part) for
drivers that see an ATA presentation of the hardware (PATA or SATA).
In the case of 3ware, the hardware does not present an ATA interface.
It presents a generic interface that might have different kinds of
storage (PATA or SATA) behind it.

This doesn't make 3ware one whit worse as a SATA controller, just
different.  In concept, it's like the fibrechannel and SCSI enclosures
that happen to use SATA drives; there is no particular reason that
the drive's mechanism for communication sould be passed all the way
down to the OS in these cases.

Now, new drivers for hardware that presents an ATA interface really
should use libata (at least for SATA, though libata is not limited
to SATA), and that's happening as a general rule.

michaelkjohnson

 "He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book."
 Linux Application Development                     -- Ben Franklin
 http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/





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