NVM Express Technology Ecosystem
Various industry organizations have supported the development of NVM Express specifications. Learn more about our official and unofficial industry liaisons:
Official Industry Liaisons
DMTF creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, servers and storage. The DMTF provides the standards needed to manage large arrays of storage devices using the Redfish management schema.
SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association)
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a global organization of storage vendors and customers who work together to better the ecosystem. Among their many projects are various Form Factor specifications and the Swordfish specification, which provides advanced storage management for NVMe technology devices in enterprise and data center worlds. NVM Express and SNIA also share a liaison agreement focused on Computational Storage.
Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG) Storage Workgroup
The Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG) Storage Workgroup builds upon existing TCG technologies and philosophy and focuses on standards for security services on dedicated storage systems. The security layer of SCSI and NVMe technology devices are defined in this group.
Industry Affiliations
CompactFlash focuses on the common goal of creating industry standards for flash-based memory cards targeting the professional imaging, video and industrial markets. It has chosen NVM Express technology as its highest performance interface option.
INCITS/T11 is responsible for standards development in Fibre Channel (FC). Fibre Channel is a “wire protocol” that may be used to communicate the NVM Express interface. Fibre Channel is commonly used in enterprise data centers.
JEDEC develops open standards for the microelectronics industry, with more than 3,000 volunteers representing over 300 global member companies. JEDEC has chosen NVM Express technology for JESD233 XFMD, a universal data storage and communication media with small and thin form factor. Its removability makes it suitable for applications that require an easy device exchange and the conformance to the NVMe specification will maximize connectivity between host and device. The JESD233 XFMD can be used in a variety of applications such as XR(AR, VR, MR), gaming, video recording (4K/8K movie, surveillance, EDR and drone), IoT, automotive, etc.
PCI-SIG is the community responsible for developing and maintaining the standardized approach to peripheral component I/O data transfers. Its PCI Express specifications are the most widely referenced wire protocol for the NVM Express technology interface. The NVMe specification is also optimized for PCI Express based solid state drives.
The SD Association is a global ecosystem of companies setting industry-leading memory card standards that simplify the use and extend the life of consumer electronics, including mobile phones, for millions of people every day. The SD Association has chosen NVM Express technology as its highest performance interface option and is used for mobile and portable markets.
The University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) provides the industry standard compliance testing for NVM Express and NVM Express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) specifications. It is well versed in compatibility and compliance testing for high performance computing. More information about the testing program can be found on the Compliance section of the NVM Express website.