Apple M1 NVMe Support Slated For Linux 5.19

[IndioNuvemChuva]

The Mac Studio is a weird case. The drives are technically replaceable, but they are just the NVRAM chips. The controller is still integrated into the SOC itself. This lets them do very annoying things like lock the replaceable drives to specific Macs.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/explaining-the-mac-studios-removable-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out/

Actually, from what I've read, including the article you linked to, they aren't locked to specific Macs so much as they just have to be reset manually in the event you move them from one machine to the other. It's certainly shitty that you need another Mac to do it, but IMO it's not nearly as egregious as if it were actually locked.

[mdedetrich]

The Mac Studio is a weird case. The drives are technically replaceable, but they are just the NVRAM chips. The controller is still integrated into the SOC itself. This lets them do very annoying things like lock the replaceable drives to specific Macs.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/explaining-the-mac-studios-removable-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out/

Yup and this is a carry over that M1 took as its origins from mobile phones, where the controller was also part of the phones SoC (for obvious reasons).

LTT did a very good video on this, while there are very technical merits for designing it this way the problem is that Mac (unsurprisingly) goes one step further and actually locks the flash storage to a Mac and lock works based on size. So if you bought two Mac Mini's with the same size you can swap the drives around but you cannot upgrade the size of a mac mini by replacing it with a larger flash storage (even an official flash based storage taken from a mac mini).

The really plausible conclusion for this is $$$, Mac really overcharges for extra sizes and so if they allowed cheap upgrades it would really undercut their bottom line.

[goosnarrggh]

NVMe describes a particular standardised protocol of commands and responses to communicate with non volatile storage. Most often this protocol is encapsulated over a PCI Express bus, but other physical transports are also supported.

I'm curious: is the communication between the OS kernel and the M1 storage controller actually an implementation of the NVMe protocol (albeit over a different physical connection) or is it some other protocol other than NVMe?

[discordian]

Just a note: In my opinion, it would be better if NVMe "accelerator chips" (data compression/decompression) were an open standard so that they become a common feature in notebooks and desktop PCs. The physical size of a block on a NVMe device is relatively large (on the order of 1 megabyte), which has a better compression ratio than compressing a 4 KiB block in isolation, and off-line compression (the NVMe device by itself performing re-compression of blocks previously lightly compressed on the fly, when it isn't under load) makes sense. Additionally, a NVMe device might move 512/4096-byte sectors having a common data pattern (such as: text files, executables) into a single block on the device to achieve a higher compression ratio. This seems to be an "unexplored territory" on regular PCs today.

NAND storage is highly complex with tons of characteristics changing. With SOCs, some time ago it was common to have raw nand access and simple controllers and you had to write your own software for handling.
Believe me, no one wants to go back in that direction

The thing you talking about could easily be handled on top, with filesystems acknowledging the page sizes. See for example PS5.

[t.s.]

To my understanding, you can at least swap in a bigger drive, though you'll want to be sure to copy the contents of the old one or else you lose everything.

AFAIK, it's not user replaceable. You must bring it to Apple. They replace the NAND, then 'reset' it with their software.

[t.s.]

So this less capable apple drive must be a lot cheaper, right? /s

Sadly, no. Everyone and their dog know how Apple Inc. sell their stuff. Except, of course, they zealot fanboys/girls.

[t.s.]

Actually, from what I've read, including the article you linked to, they aren't locked to specific Macs so much as they just have to be reset manually in the event you move them from one machine to the other. It's certainly shitty that you need another Mac to do it, but IMO it's not nearly as egregious as if it were actually locked.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/21/22989226/apple-mac-studios-removable-ssd-blocked-software-replacement

Again, depends on Apple. If they want to hijack it, they could. Changing ssd should not be that exhausting.

[anarki2]

Is this NVMe drive unreplaceable/vendor-locked?
It would be the most anti-consumer thing if storage isn't easily replaceable...

Nice offtopic attempt. If you have a problem with that, buy something else.

[tildearrow]

Nice offtopic attempt. If you have a problem with that, buy something else.

So what would be on-topic according to you?
It's not like I am planning to go for Apple after evaluating cost of ownership.

[Developer12]

AFAIK, it's not user replaceable. You must bring it to Apple. They replace the NAND, then 'reset' it with their software.

Red the other comments. It is replaceable, but the fact that the controller is in the SoC means the contents are lost.

You can swap it at home yourself. The software used is called Configurator 2 and anyone can run it.