EHCI and OHCI Drivers

This description is new in the Solaris Express 9/03 release. For Solaris 9 users, this feature is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

Features of the EHCI driver include the following:

• Compliance with enhanced host controller interface that supports USB 2.0.

• Support for high-speed control, bulk, and interrupt transfers.

• Currently, no support is available for high-speed isochronous transactions. For example, you cannot connect USB 1.x devices to a 2.0 hub that is connected to a USB 2.0 port.

Note the following when using EHCI and OHCI controlled devices:

• A USB 2.0 host controller has one high-speed Enhanced Host Controller (EHCI) and one or more low-speed or full-speed OpenHCI Host Controller (OHCI) embedded controllers. Devices connected to a USB 2.0 port are dynamically assigned to either an EHCI or OHCI controller, depending on whether they support USB 2.0.

• If USB 2.0 and USB 1.x devices are on the system, the EHCI and OHCI drivers “hand-off” device control, depending on the type of device that is connected to the system.

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  Note –

  USB 2.0 storage devices connected to a port on a USB 2.0 PCI card, and that were used with a prior Solaris release in the same hardware configuration, can change device names after upgrading to this release. This change occurs because these devices are now seen as USB 2.0 devices and are taken over by the EHCI controller. The controller number, w in /dev/[r]dsk/cwtxdysz, is changed for these devices.

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For further information, see the man pages ehci(7D) and ohci(7D).