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AHCI works on Intel Boards with new 10.4.4 kext!

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bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted (edited)

:construction: Hey man, thanks for the prompt reply!

 

I'm surprised the AHCI kexts don't work for some people with Intel 945 boards. I used build Mac OS X Build 1111A, I'm also running the latest BIOS for my board (D945GTP BIOS from 1.9.2006). My hard drive is a S-ATA II capable Western Digital WD2500JS.

 

OK, I have updated to the same BIOS and have a Western Digital WD360GB (36 GB Raptor 10K RPM) which I believe is only S-ATA I (150).

 

Now, I aml confused about what build "1111A" actually means. The DVD I downloaded was titled "8f1111" ("1111a" was not an option) and I ran "JaS.1111a.Generic.Patch.Final" on it. Next time I boot in, I will try to check the build number.

 

EDIT: System Profiler says I am running build "8F1111g"

 

 

The only thing people are doing differently is rebuilding the kext cache. I never rebuild my kext cache, it's not needed since Mac OS 10.2 because the system does it automatically. But that shouldn't make a difference...

 

So, what I am experiencing may be a known issue. I will skip the kect cache rebuilding step in the next try.

 

Boot in verboose mode, too see where the boot process hangs.

 

Will do, and thanks again for your help.

Edited by bofors
bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted

:construction::hysterical::D:D:D

 

It works now.

 

I am not sure why because as far as I can tell the only different I did was not rebuild the kext cache.

 

Otherwise, like perviously reported their is "no information" in System Profiler for the SATA drives

 

Thanks, again.

forcer
forcer
Posted
Posted
:D:D:D:D:D

 

It works now.

 

I am not sure why because as far as I can tell the only different I did was not rebuild the kext cache.

 

Otherwise, like perviously reported their is "no information" in System Profiler for the SATA drives

 

Thanks, again.

 

works for me too :D

forcer
forcer
Posted
Posted
Ah yes, but is it any faster?

 

I have looked if it is loaded, and I have discovered that it was not!

after kextstat no AHCI driver there...

kextload did the work, but I can't tell if there is any diference.

maybe someone who has it loaded in boot time can do xbench to ensure it has some effect.

bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted (edited)
By the way who said to rebuild kext cache? I never understood why people do it...

 

domino, I just follow the instructions for adding new kexts he posted here:

 

http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=6969&st=0#

 

Ah yes, but is it any faster?

 

I subjectively think it is, my box "felt" faster when I got it working, and I assume that it theorectically should be.

 

However, even with AHCI enabled, 10.4.3 Disk Utility still does not seem to permit me to construct RAID arrays.

 

maybe someone who has it loaded in boot time can do xbench to ensure it has some effect.

I ran some limited Xbench tests and I did I saw any significant change. I am concerned that Xbench may not be good enough for exploring this and many other questions.

 

AHCI is an industry-defined specification for SATA host controller registers and command

operations. It addresses limitations of existing host controller interfaces such as proprietary power

management solutions, software intensive command delivery and interrupt overhead, and limited

device count support (two devices per channel, four total devices per controller with Parallel

ATA). ICH6R AHCI support allows standardized host controller support for new SATA features

such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and hot plug. NCQ is an important feature within the

ICH6R AHCI implementation that improves performance for the storage interface.

 

...

 

One of the AHCI features that addresses performance is Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

Command queuing is a mechanism where drives are issued multiple commands at the same time

and are allowed to complete them in arbitrary order. Intelligent reordering of commands within

the drive’s internal command queue helps improve performance of workloads by minimizing

mechanical positioning (both seek and rotational) latencies on the drive. Command queuing has

been used in SCSI drives for more than a decade to deliver enhanced performance for random

I/O, but there has not been an efficient and high performance command queuing scheme

developed for ATA drives over that same period. Native Command Queuing, as defined in Serial

ATA, has addressed this important feature for Serial ATA drives. Intel has brought NCQ benefits

to the desktop segment with AHCI in ICH6R.

 

ICH6R’s AHCI implementation enables software to efficiently issue up to 32 commands to a

drive by providing a command list. Software can build all 32 commands at the same time and the

host will automatically issue these commands to the disk drive in order to minimize software

overhead and decrease latency. ICH6R’s hardware automatically processes requests from the

drive to transfer data without software intervention, including selecting the appropriate DMA

engine context for the transfer. ICH6R is capable of reporting multiple command completions at

the same time, enabling additional software overhead/interrupt reduction. Software is able to

dynamically add commands to the list as command slots are freed by previous command

completions. NCQ must also be supported by the hard drive to take advantage of the feature.

 

ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/...ts/30264802.pdf

 

My next work on my box will be trying to use the on-board RAID controller to set an array. Here again I think the issue will come down AHCI as unmodified 10.4.3 does not see Intel's RAID drives either.

 

I am going to setting up a RAID pair in BIOS, then booting on another a drive to determine if OS X will recognize the RAID drive or not. It might either, because I know that Intel also include software drivers for RAID (which I assume are for Windows):

Edited by bofors
suleiman
suleiman
Posted
Posted

I have a GMA900 on a Dell D610 that I am suspecting has AHCI. Can someone please tell me where I would find the 10.4.4 kext to load and try this puppy out? I'm really interested in any speed gains that might be achieved here.

bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted (edited)
I have a GMA900

 

Of course you know that is a graphics chip and AHCI support would be in your "southbridge", perhaps your's is a ICH6/7[R]?

 

Can someone please tell me where I would find the 10.4.4 kext

 

Here are all the of 10.4.4 kext's (not just the two needed to enable AHCI here), ~35 MB:

 

Try this first:

 

EDIT: Possible DMCA violation.

 

If the above is fails or makes you wait more than a few minutes then try this second:

 

EDIT: Possible DMCA violation.

Edited by bofors
bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted (edited)

Page 9: ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/...ts/30264802.pdf

 

ahciresults0dh.jpg

 

"BLUE" • ICH6R Serial ATA (using the native Microsoft driver in the operating system which does not

support AHCI or NCQ)

"RED" • ICH6R Serial ATA single drive “RAID ready” (includes support for AHCI and NCQ on a

single hard drive)

"YELLOW" • ICH6R Serial ATA RAID Level 0 (includes support for AHCI and NCQ on two hard drives)

 

The focus on the results for this storage comparison will be on the HDD Test Suite for the

PCMark 04 benchmark. The HDD Test Suite has four, separate sub-tests within the suite along

with a calculated overall score (HDD Score).

The first subtest, XP Startup, is a trace of the disk activity occurring at operating system start-up.

The results from this test show NCQ outperforming the native driver by 14%. RAID 0 with NCQ

is showing a benefit of 78% on this test.

Application Loading is the second subtest which contains application disk activity during the

opening and closing of files. NCQ has a minimal impact on the performance during this

workload, but RAID 0 is showing an improvement of 18%.

The third test, File Copying, contains disk activity during file copies within the operating system.

Native Command Queuing is showing a benefit of 2%, while RAID 0 is providing 83% better

scores.

The final test, General HDD Usage, contains disk activities from using several common

applications including but not limited to the playback of media files, virus scanning, and file

compression. NCQ is showing a benefit of 5% on this sub-test. RAID 0 is adding a 33% benefit

over the native driver in the operating system.

The results in this testing show that the Maxtor MaXLine 7B250SO hard drive with NCQ support

in combination with the Intel Application Accelerator software outperforms the current standard

native driver configurations. This is seen both in the single drive (“RAID ready”), with a 5%

improvement in the HDD Score, and RAID 0 configuration, with a 48% improvement in the HDD

Score. This Maxtor SATA hard drive model will be one of the first desktop drives to incorporate

this new Native Command Queuing feature. We expect other hard disk drive vendors will adopt

Serial ATA Native Command Queuing in future products as well.

 

Note: Each test was run a total of three times and recorded, then the MEDIAN of the three runs was

calculated for each configuration. The MEDIAN values have been normalized to the results of the

ICH6R Serial ATA IDE configuration in the charts below.

ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/...ts/30264802.pdf

 

To summize, on Windows XP (we should expect the same on OSx86) enabling AHCI support on SATA had at best a 5% improvement of the default IDE mode. This is attribute to Native Command Queuing (NCQ) which must be supported by the hard drive as well:

 

Native Command Queuing (NCQ):

Command queuing is a mechanism where drives are issued multiple commands at the same time

and are allowed to complete them in arbitrary order. Intelligent reordering of commands within

the drive’s internal command queue helps improve performance of workloads by minimizing

mechanical positioning (both seek and rotational) latencies on the drive.

 

...

 

(full exert posted above)

ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/...ts/30264802.pdf

Edited by bofors
bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted (edited)

Here are some notes about where I am at with RAID.

 

(1) Applicable kernal extensions appear to include:

 

AppleRAID.kext

MegaRAID.kext (PPC only)

SoftRAID.kext

 

Are other's need? Is MegaRAID needed?

 

(2) SoftRAID.kext appears to been made universal during the 10.4.3->10.4.4 update.

 

(3) Apply all these kexts to 10.4.3 causes no problems here but still does not permit RAID construction of internal SATA drives with Disk Utility.app

 

(4) However, both external FireWire and USB devices appear to be supported for software RAID (it is not known if the updated kexts are required for this).

 

(5) It appears that Intel's hardware RAID, "Matrix Storage Technology", requires drivers. There are Linux and FreeBSD patches to enable it:

 

Linux: http://iswraid.sourceforge.net/

FreeBSD: http://www.ambrisko.com/doug/ata/

Edited by bofors
discorocker
discorocker
Posted
  • Author
Posted

Bofors, you're right, Intel RAID requires drivers, which, as far as I know, Mac OS X does not have. The RAID feature that is built into Mac OS is a software RAID. The reason you can't build a RAIS is possibly because Disk Utility from 10.4.4 and corresponding frameworks is needed. Anyway, Intel Matrix Storage will ge you nowhere with Mac OS X.

 

Also, I don't think AHCI is measurably faster, but I don't have to change BIOS settings anymore to boot Windows, so its defeinitley a winner for me.

Umbris
Umbris
Posted
Posted
I'm not so lucky.

 

If I try kextload, I get: Can't add kernel extension....

 

Further, -tv options, reveal a lot dependency problems.

 

I must correct myself, I can load kext but it will not load automatically at boot.

 

System profiler can see SATA disks but in in Disk Utility is written ATA driver for disk. Is this telling something? There is also no SMART support.

 

But I can choose onlySATA mode in bios and computer will boot.

suleiman
suleiman
Posted
Posted

DiskSpeedBench is a free app and is now compiled as a unibin. If people want to test out if this is making a difference and Xbench isn't showing them what they're looking for, you can hop on over and try that app out.

 

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20482

Tek_No
Tek_No
Posted
Posted

As always: are these Benchmark tools to be trusted: I downloaded DiskSpeedBench and first ran it on my laptop on batteries (Hitachi 7200 rpm disk). After that I plugged in the powercord and ran the exact same benchmark: according to DiskSpeedBench the disk was slower on power than on batteries???

 

:gun:

bofors
bofors
Posted
Posted (edited)
Can someone summarize this thread?

Sure.

Is it possible or not?

Yes.

How to check which kext is driving disks?

I don't know exactly.

What we have to see in system profiler under SATA parameter?

What? You will see "no information" under System Profiler, use "Get Info" (command I) under Disk Utility instead to verify SMART status instead.

why do it?

Because it enables NCQ support, it may be a prerequisite for setting RAID arrays and it is the "right" thing to do for SATA interfaces, nonetheless as Intel has clearly pointed out, the performance gains under benchmarks are nominal.

Edited by bofors
Juurlo
Juurlo
Posted
Posted
As always: are these Benchmark tools to be trusted: I downloaded DiskSpeedBench and first ran it on my laptop on batteries (Hitachi 7200 rpm disk). After that I plugged in the powercord and ran the exact same benchmark: according to DiskSpeedBench the disk was slower on power than on batteries???

 

:)

 

Got my WD1500 Raptor yesterday, the disk is awesomely fast - but that can't be seen in the benchmarks, it scores almost exactly the same as my other, slower SATA drive. (and both SATA drives are almost 50% faster than my PATA HD, which shouldn't be exactly slow, either...)

 

Then again, I'm still running patched 10.4.1 without AHCI kexts - the new Raptor should gain advantage when NCQ is enabled?

Jason_Thames
Jason_Thames
Posted
Posted

Just to make you guys aware...

 

I have enabled AHCI on my Dell Dimension 8400 with 2 160GB Seagate Barracudas. Working quite nicely... I am pleased. Now if we could just get that stupid ATI mouse tearing problem fixed...

 

--Jason

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