Seagate has the first hard drive with an extension Sweetened NVMe support was demonstrated at the Open Compute Project Summit. The hope is that in the future, data center hard drives and SSDs will use the same NVMe interface.
Seagate demo model It uses a controller that supports SAS, SATA and NVMe protocols through an NVMe connection, without the need for a bridge. The NVMe hard drive was demonstrated in a 2U server where twelve 3.5-inch NVMe hard drives were connected to a PCIe adapter, the first version used PCIe 3.0, but commercial variants are expected to support PCIe 4.0.
While NVMe and PCIe support faster speeds than SATA and SAS protocols, the move to NVMe hard drives isn’t just about facilitating faster read and write speeds. With the switch, hard drives and SSDs in servers will use the same connections, which should simplify hardware for servers. This will require fewer components. Therefore NVMe hard drives should offer a lower cost of ownership as well as energy savings, as well as improvements in performance and scalability.
The first samples of Seagate NVMe hard drives are expected to be available for customer selection in September 2022. Commercial NVMe-equipped hard drives will follow in mid-2024, the manufacturer reports. At the moment, NVMe hard drives seem to be primarily intended for data centers. It is not clear if consumer hard drives with NVMe support will also appear in the future.
Source: Seagate
