While I agree with your view that this article is indeed very nicely written, I would very respectfully like to disagree with the notion that the quality of articles or analysis on this website has gone down in any way since the great Anand Shimpi left.
There is no doubt about the quality of Anand's articles and this website itself is a tribute to his impeccable style of tech journalism, however, times have changed since he first started writing or even from 2012-13, when Anand still actively wrote articles.
I list a few reasons which I feel contribute to the change in content/style of the articles:
1.) The focus of the tech industry has changed. I don't see people talking about RGB lighting on the motherboards and keyboards as much in 2010 as now and that trickles down to the articles as well.
2.) Things are always getting more and more complex. Take any product in any category and you will find that they are always more complex than their counterparts in 2010-12 from motherboards to mobile devices everything. While it would be great to talk about all the things and analyze them, I think every writer makes a conscious decision of limiting the amount of material in the article and prioritizing a few things over the other. The reason, for me, is usually that not all readers would want to or have patience/stamina to read everything.
3.) Tech companies while having indulged in customer engagement more have grown more and more secretive in sharing the details of the their projects which doesn't help if you are writing an analytical article on new technology.
4.) While there are numerous product launches and events which all amounts to a frenzied pace of events and activities for the writers, the actual changes have been coming in smaller and smaller increments themselves. Companies are sticking with the tried and tested components and only tweaking few things at a time. Now regardless of whether someone agrees or disagrees with this approach, it does result in lesser material to write about.
These are simply my opinions and I just want to say that I love this website and not just Billy but also Ian, Ryan, Matt and Ganesh and everyone else. I am just very grateful that this website exists.
Most of the new NVMe features have nothing to do with motherboards. It's mostly stuff that drives need to support in their firmware or with new controllers, and the OS needs to support in its NVMe drivers. Boot Partitions support is a whole-system thing, but it won't be appearing on desktop motherboards. SR-IOV ties in with stuff the motherboard firmware needs to support (like VT-d) but there's nothing particular to NVMe 1.3 that motherboards will need to add; they just need to enable the full range of general-purpose virtualization features.
Maybe someone can correct me but If I recall it was about end of 2014 when NVME 1.2 was published and we saw drive a little under 2 years after that like the Samsung 960 series.
The NVMe specifications are drafted from the "NVMe Workgroup" which is an alliance formed by more than 90 tech players in the world, from device manufacturers to software vendors. So, it will be a matter of few months before we start to see storage devices with new features as part of latest spec along with the necessary software stack in the OS.
"The boot partition feature is unlikely to be useful or ever implemented on user-upgradable drives, but it provides an opportunity for cost savings in embedded systems like smartphones and tablets" ... "Nobody is particularly interested in switching to the 16kB or larger sector sizes that would be necessary to match page sizes of modern 3D NAND flash, but there is potential for better performance if operating systems align I/O to the real page size." These sentences are examples of why I rarely visit hardware sites other than Anandtech. The first is an example of, "what do readers want to know?" (vs. just regurgitation of some press release). The second is an example of analysis by someone who both knows the subject matter and knows how to write it in an informationally dense but approachable manner. This, right after an article about WD intervening with the Toshiba sale, showing an in-depth understanding of the business side of things.
I do believe that Billy Tallis is my new favorite technology writer.
The NVMe layer is not the one limiting performances. Enterprise level drives have shown that it can both saturate the physical layer in sequential access (on PCIe x8 gen3, as long as you have enough parallel channels) and deliver low random access (on the new Xpoint drives). So, what they are adding are requested features, needed by different industries and usage. No, it will not run your Crysis faster, but it will help integration in devices from servers to phones.
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Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Nice Work!wyewye - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
GJ Billy, it was a long time since I saw such high quality articles on Anandtech.It reminds me of Anand /sheds tear.
Cellar Door - Thursday, May 25, 2017 - link
Are you on crack? Clearly you only read the mainstream snippets. As there have been plenty of high quality content available.sleeplessclassics - Thursday, May 25, 2017 - link
While I agree with your view that this article is indeed very nicely written, I would very respectfully like to disagree with the notion that the quality of articles or analysis on this website has gone down in any way since the great Anand Shimpi left.There is no doubt about the quality of Anand's articles and this website itself is a tribute to his impeccable style of tech journalism, however, times have changed since he first started writing or even from 2012-13, when Anand still actively wrote articles.
I list a few reasons which I feel contribute to the change in content/style of the articles:
1.) The focus of the tech industry has changed. I don't see people talking about RGB lighting on the motherboards and keyboards as much in 2010 as now and that trickles down to the articles as well.
2.) Things are always getting more and more complex. Take any product in any category and you will find that they are always more complex than their counterparts in 2010-12 from motherboards to mobile devices everything. While it would be great to talk about all the things and analyze them, I think every writer makes a conscious decision of limiting the amount of material in the article and prioritizing a few things over the other. The reason, for me, is usually that not all readers would want to or have patience/stamina to read everything.
3.) Tech companies while having indulged in customer engagement more have grown more and more secretive in sharing the details of the their projects which doesn't help if you are writing an analytical article on new technology.
4.) While there are numerous product launches and events which all amounts to a frenzied pace of events and activities for the writers, the actual changes have been coming in smaller and smaller increments themselves. Companies are sticking with the tried and tested components and only tweaking few things at a time. Now regardless of whether someone agrees or disagrees with this approach, it does result in lesser material to write about.
These are simply my opinions and I just want to say that I love this website and not just Billy but also Ian, Ryan, Matt and Ganesh and everyone else. I am just very grateful that this website exists.
prime2515103 - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Any idea when we will see this on motherboards?By the way, I agree with the two posters before me, very nice job on this article.
Billy Tallis - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Most of the new NVMe features have nothing to do with motherboards. It's mostly stuff that drives need to support in their firmware or with new controllers, and the OS needs to support in its NVMe drivers. Boot Partitions support is a whole-system thing, but it won't be appearing on desktop motherboards. SR-IOV ties in with stuff the motherboard firmware needs to support (like VT-d) but there's nothing particular to NVMe 1.3 that motherboards will need to add; they just need to enable the full range of general-purpose virtualization features.Infy2 - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
I suppose it takes several years for any of this to come to fruition. Support required from operating system, NVMe driver and drive firmware.Gothmoth - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
your talking nonsense. several years.... lol.FreckledTrout - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Maybe someone can correct me but If I recall it was about end of 2014 when NVME 1.2 was published and we saw drive a little under 2 years after that like the Samsung 960 series.willis936 - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Were you not around when NVMe first hit the block? All of those things happened within three months.scmorange16 - Thursday, May 25, 2017 - link
The NVMe specifications are drafted from the "NVMe Workgroup" which is an alliance formed by more than 90 tech players in the world, from device manufacturers to software vendors. So, it will be a matter of few months before we start to see storage devices with new features as part of latest spec along with the necessary software stack in the OS.Sivar - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
"The boot partition feature is unlikely to be useful or ever implemented on user-upgradable drives, but it provides an opportunity for cost savings in embedded systems like smartphones and tablets"...
"Nobody is particularly interested in switching to the 16kB or larger sector sizes that would be necessary to match page sizes of modern 3D NAND flash, but there is potential for better performance if operating systems align I/O to the real page size."
These sentences are examples of why I rarely visit hardware sites other than Anandtech.
The first is an example of, "what do readers want to know?" (vs. just regurgitation of some press release).
The second is an example of analysis by someone who both knows the subject matter and knows how to write it in an informationally dense but approachable manner.
This, right after an article about WD intervening with the Toshiba sale, showing an in-depth understanding of the business side of things.
I do believe that Billy Tallis is my new favorite technology writer.
vladx - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
mnteresting, but none of that promises major improvements in the future.frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, May 31, 2017 - link
The NVMe layer is not the one limiting performances.Enterprise level drives have shown that it can both saturate the physical layer in sequential access (on PCIe x8 gen3, as long as you have enough parallel channels) and deliver low random access (on the new Xpoint drives).
So, what they are adding are requested features, needed by different industries and usage.
No, it will not run your Crysis faster, but it will help integration in devices from servers to phones.
ET - Thursday, May 25, 2017 - link
I'll be waiting for future news about security vulnerabilities found in Directives.jhkwak - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
i am interested in stream support in nvme ssd. is there nvme ssd product supporting stream? or is there a product to be released?