The NVMe Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) interface is being developed by NVM Express. By dividing an NVMe namespace into zones, which are required to be sequentially written, ZNS offers essential benefits to hyper-scale organizations, all-flash array vendors and large storage-system vendors wishing to take advantage of storage devices optimized for sequential… Read More
An NVMe namespace is a quantity of non-volatile memory (NVM) that can be formatted into logical blocks. Namespaces are used when a storage virtual machine is configured with the NVMe protocol. One or more namespaces are provisioned and connected to an NVMe host. Each namespace can support various block sizes. Read More
Multipathing, also called I/O multipathing, is the establishment of multiple physical routes between a server and the storage device that supports it. This is done to prevent Single Point of Failure and achieve continuous operations. Read More
Persistent Memory Region (PMR) is an optinal area of persistent memory that is located on the NVMe device, that can be read with standard PCIe memory reads/writes. This could be extra DRAM that is power protected, storage class memory or other new memory types. The use cases are not defined… Read More
Host Memory Buffer (HMB) is a low-level shared memory interface that can enable high-performance applications such as small payload control loops and large random access buffers. Read More
NVM Sets is a logical construct that can divide an SSD up into multiple smaller NVM Sets that may be physically isolated from each other, for instance on NAND SSDs on a separate channel or number of NAND dice. This provides isolation and a solution to the noisy neighbor problem… Read More
IO determinism defines a way for the SSD and the host to coordinate times for the SSD to do background garbage collection and conversely provide a deterministic window where the drive has the best read latency. Read More
There are many features that the NVMe specification supports. An explanation of the functionality of the many features can be found in section 8 of the NVMe specification. Read More
SAS or SATA use the SCSI protocol. The SCSI protocol uses acknowledgment overhead to make sure data is received. The NVMe protocol is much slimmer, has less overhead and uses fewer CPU cycles to process. Therefore, it is much faster than SATA and lower latency. Read More
There are various examples of NVMe technology being used in mobile devices at extremely low power–the most notable being the Apple iPhone. M.2 and NVMe BGA devices for notebooks, laptops, and tablets are also demonstrating lower power and improved battery life vs SATA. Read More