NVMe

Definitions

1. Non-Volatile Memory Express — a storage protocol designed specifically for SSDs, replacing the SATA/AHCI protocols that were designed for spinning hard drives. NVMe communicates over PCIe with multiple parallel queues (65K queues × 64K commands each), achieving latencies under 20 microseconds and throughput over 7GB/s. The standard for modern high-performance storage.

   In plain English: A fast storage connection designed specifically for SSDs, much faster than the old SATA cables designed for spinning hard drives.

   Example: "Swap the SATA SSD for NVMe — the database's random read latency drops from 100μs to 10μs, and sequential throughput quadruples."

Related Terms

• DMA
• Clock Speed
• Overclocking
• CPU Cache
• Branch Prediction
• SIMD
• NUMA
• Superscalar
• Write Through
• FLOPS
• On the Metal