NVMe

NVM Express (NVMe for short) is an interface first published in 2011 to connect SSDs, i.e. nonvolatile memory (NVM for short), via PCI Express without the need for manufacturer-specific drivers. It is supposed to increase the speed especially with parallel accesses, as they often occur with multithreading, by reducing the latency and the overhead caused by the commands.

The driving force behind the standard is Intel, and storage manufacturers such as Dell, Cisco, EMC, Marvell and memory manufacturers SanDisk, Avago Technologies, Micron Technology, HGST, Samsung and Seagate are also involved. Originally, NVMe was primarily developed for servers; the SSDs thus look like PCI Express cards and also behave similarly. In the meantime, NVMe is also used in notebooks, although other connectors and sizes have been defined for this.