How commands are processed
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## How commands are processed

Depending on which protocol and which controller are used, commands are processed differently. For the purpose of discussion, a controller which uses taskfile interface and all standard callbacks is assumed.

Currently 6 ATA command protocols are used. They can be sorted into the following four categories according to how they are processed.

ATA NO DATA or DMA

  ATA_PROT_NODATA and ATA_PROT_DMA fall into this category. These types of commands don't require any software intervention once issued. Device will raise interrupt on completion.

ATA PIO

  ATA_PROT_PIO is in this category. libata currently implements PIO with polling. ATA_NIEN bit is set to turn off interrupt and pio_task on ata_wq performs polling and IO.

ATAPI NODATA or DMA

  ATA_PROT_ATAPI_NODATA and ATA_PROT_ATAPI_DMA are in this category. packet_task is used to poll BSY bit after issuing PACKET command. Once BSY is turned off by the device, packet_task transfers CDB and hands off processing to interrupt handler.

ATAPI PIO

  ATA_PROT_ATAPI is in this category. ATA_NIEN bit is set and, as in ATAPI NODATA or DMA, packet_task submits cdb. However, after submitting cdb, further processing (data transfer) is handed off to pio_task.

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