We're used to getting revisions of computer standards fairly regularly. Think about how
many versions of USB, DDR, and PCI Express we've been through. But we haven't had to put much
thought into NVMe so far, as there's only been one major version of it. Until now,
as the NVMe 2.0 standard has just been released. In case you're out of the loop, NVMe, or Non-Bolatile
Memory Express, is the protocol that PCI Express connected storage drives use. Because it's much
faster than the older SATA standard, it's enabled those gaudy four-figure throughput numbers you see
on manufacturer spec sheets for M.2 drives. And the NVMe 2.0 specification is bringing some new
features to the table. So let's dive right in. One of the major improvements is for something
called zoned namespaces. And that might sound like some kind of forward-thinking therapy collective,
but it's actually a system designed to address some of the biggest issues with SSDs. You see,
even though SSDs are a lot faster than old-school spinning hard drives, there's a significant
amount of inefficiency under the hood. Because the cells in an SSD can only be written to so many
times before they wear out for good, the SSD's internal logic has to move data around in a process
called wear leveling to make sure certain cells don't exhaust their lifespans more quickly than
others. Additionally, SSDs can't directly overwrite cells. Instead, cells have to have their data
erased first. And this has to be done in groups of cells. So any data in that group that the system
needs to preserve must be copied to an empty area. SSDs reserve a certain amount of space called
over-provisioning to support these data operations, meaning a significant amount of storage is inaccessible
to the user. NVMe 2.0's zoned namespaces help alleviate this situation by allowing programs
to reserve specific physical areas on the SSD and write data for that program sequentially.
Without zoned namespaces, the SSD itself would be in charge of what data goes where. And this
often results in a specific program's data being scattered all over the drive, meaning that any
changes to that data could require lots of those read, copy, delete actions that use a large amount
of over-provisioned space. But with zoned namespaces, a smaller physical footprint per program
means the SSD won't have to over-provision as much space, nor do so many reads and writes,
meaning effectively larger drives, with better endurance for the same cost. And programs could
also see a performance boost from zoned namespaces as SSDs read and write sequential data faster than
they do random data. So not only is this good for consumers like you and me, but larger organizations
should see an even greater benefit than us, since when you're running lots of SSDs in parallel,
such as inside a gigantic server farm, having that much wasted space and latency
can have a significant negative impact. Not to mention the direct cost of having to replace drives
that wear out. The second significant benefit of NVMe 2.0 that we're going to discuss today is
its surprising support for mechanical hard drives. But why would it support mechanical hard drives?
Even higher-end drives can't come anywhere close to using the full bandwidth of plain old
SATA. So what gives? It turns out that recent advances in hard drive manufacturing have allowed
drives to read data off the platters more quickly, partly due to improvements in the actuators that
move the drive parts around, and partly due to fitting more data on the platters themselves,
through techniques like heat-assisted magnetic recording, which you can learn about up here.
Hammer time. This means that some hard drives that are just starting to hit the market
can get sustained transfer rates above 500 megabytes per second sequentially,
which is comparable to SATA-based SSDs. NVMe 2.0 will provide enough bandwidth
to ensure newer hard drives can max out their potential, especially important in larger settings
that use lots of hard drives for mass storage. They can share data among themselves quickly.
Of course, because the NVMe 2.0 spec was released recently,
it'll be a while before we see products that support it. But hopefully the result will be
larger, cheaper drives for your home PC, and quicker, more reliable access to cloud services.
I just wouldn't expect Disney to slash the price of your streaming subscription
with the money they're saving on drives. World doesn't tend to work like that.
So thanks for watching guys! If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe,
and hit us up in the comments section with your suggestions for topics we should cover in the
future.