NVMe 2.1 Specifications Released: Enhancing Storage for AI, Cloud, and Enterprise

As part of the Flash Memory Summit this week, the NVMe 2.1 specifications were published today. This release includes the NVMe 2.1 Base specification, Command Set specifications (NVM Command Set, ZNS Command Set, Key Value Command Set), Transport specifications (PCIe Transport, Fibre Channel Transport, RDMA Transport, and TCP Transport), and the NVMe Management Interface specification.

NVM Express has published three new specifications and eight updated specifications as part of this update for FMS 2024. These new and updated specs aim to better unify storage across AI, cloud, client, and the enterprise landscape.

New NVMe Capabilities

The revised specifications introduce several new NVMe capabilities, including:

• Live Migration: Enabling live migration of PCIe NVMe controllers between NVM subsystems.
• Host-Directed Data Placement: New host-directed data placement for SSDs that simplifies ecosystem integration and is backwards compatible with previous NVMe specifications.
• Host Processing Offload: Support for offloading some host processing to NVMe storage devices.
• Network Boot Mechanism: A network boot mechanism for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™).
• NVMe-oF Zoning: Support for NVMe over Fabrics zoning.
• Encryption Management: Ability to provide host management of encryption keys and highly granular encryption with Key Per I/O.
• Security Enhancements: Support for TLS 1.3, a centralized authentication verification entity for DH-HMAC-CHAP, and post sanitization media verification.
• Management Enhancements: Support for high availability out-of-band management, management over I3C, out-of-band management asynchronous events, and dynamic creation of exported NVM subsystems from underlying NVM subsystem physical resources.

NVMe Specifications Overview

The NVM Express® (NVMe®) specifications define how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across multiple transports like PCI Express® (PCIe®), RDMA, TCP, and more. It is the industry standard for solid state drives (SSDs) in all form factors (U.2, M.2, AIC, EDSFF). NVM Express is the non-profit consortium of tech industry leaders defining, managing, and marketing NVMe technology. The latest versions of the specifications, NVMe 2.0 specifications, were released on June 3, 2021.

Guide to the NVM Express Specification Family

The NVMe 2.0 specifications consist of multiple documents, including:

• NVMe Base Specification: Defines a protocol for host software to communicate with non-volatile memory subsystems over a variety of memory-based and message-based transports.
• Command Set Specifications: Includes the NVM Command Set, ZNS Command Set, and KV Command Set specifications, which define data structures, features, log pages, commands, and status values extending the NVMe Base Specification.
• Transport Specifications: Includes the PCIe Transport, Fibre Channel Transport, RDMA Transport, and TCP Transport specifications, which define the binding of the NVMe protocol to specific transports.
• NVMe Boot Specification: Defines constructs and guidelines for booting from NVM Express interfaces.
• NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI) Specification: Defines an optional management interface for all NVM Express Subsystems.

Additional Information

Please note that the webpage includes obsolete specifications (e.g., the NVMe-oF Specification) as a historical reference. Ratified Technical Proposals and Electrical Change Requests are available by specification.

With these updates, NVM Express continues to evolve, offering enhanced performance, security, and manageability to meet the growing demands of modern storage solutions across various industries.

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