NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a storage transfer protocol designed specifically for flash memory and solid-state drives (SSDs). It enables faster data transfer speeds, lower latency, and higher parallelism compared to traditional protocols like SATA and SAS.
Key Points about NVMe Flash Storage
- NVMe allows flash storage devices like SSDs to communicate directly with the computer's CPU via the high-speed PCIe bus, bypassing the overhead of legacy protocols.
- It supports up to 64,000 parallel queues and 64,000 commands per queue, enabling massively parallel access to flash storage.
- NVMe is optimized for non-volatile memory like NAND flash, providing significantly lower latency and higher throughput compared to protocols designed for hard disk drives.
- NVMe-based SSDs can achieve over 1 million IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), up to 900% faster than AHCI-based SSDs using SATA.
- NVMe enables higher performance, lower latency, and better scalability for demanding workloads like high-resolution video editing, rendering, AI/ML, and large data sets.
- Major storage vendors like Pure Storage, Western Digital, and Quantum offer NVMe-based all-flash storage arrays and appliances for enterprise and data center use cases.
In summary, NVMe is a high-performance storage protocol that unlocks the full potential of flash memory, providing significant performance gains over traditional storage interfaces for data-intensive applications and workloads.
