Apple M1 NVMe Linux Driver Out For Review

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apple M1 NVMe Linux Driver Out For Review

Sent out last week amid the busy Linux 5.18 merge window days were the patch series wiring up an Apple NVMe driver for use with the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max SoCs...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-NVMe-Linux-Driver-Review

[anarki2]

Oh boy, stable Linux support can't come soon enough. Excellent machines with a lame OS currently.

[Developer12]

Cue more complaints about "ThEy SoFtWaRe LoCkEd ThEs SsDs"

FTR, the modules in the mac studio hold raw flash chips. They are not industry-standard SSDs. The controller is on the M1 die. If you swap the raw flash between two different controllers it will be corrupted, just like if you swapped raw flash chips between two consumer SSDs. This is recoverable by running apple's configuration tool yourself but it will wipe the drive.

EDIT: I should have made this clearer, but there are no software locks.

Next thing you know we're going to see people trying to jam RAM DIMMs into those slots and complaining when it catches fire.

[tildearrow]

Cue more complaints about "ThEy SoFtWaRe LoCkEd ThEs SsDs"

FTR, the modules in the mac studio hold raw flash chips. They are not industry-standard SSDs. The controller is on the M1 die. If you swap the raw flash between two different controllers it will be corrupted, just like if you swapped raw flash chips between two consumer SSDs. This is recoverable by running apple's configuration tool yourself but it will wipe the drive.

Next thing you know we're going to see people trying to jam RAM DIMMs into those slots and complaining when it catches fire.

That's terrible. Planned obsolescence.

One important factor to buying a computer (and in my case, for the purpose of using it as a server) is total cost of ownership.
The longer the system lasts (with maintenance/repair), the better.

While these look very attractive due to high performance and low power consumption (which means a lower electric bill over time), durability doesn't appear to be guaranteed...
If the flash chips fail because reasons, how am I supposed to repair them?

Until there isn't a good M1 competitor, I'm not happy...

[ihatemichael]

Oh boy, stable Linux support can't come soon enough. Excellent machines with a lame OS currently.

I see nothing excellent about hardware that's hard to repair on purpose, I'd take my ThinkPad anytime.

I agree with the rest of your comment, macos is such a piece of shit that's not even funny.

[Developer12]

That's terrible. Planned obsolescence.

One important factor to buying a computer (and in my case, for the purpose of using it as a server) is total cost of ownership.
The longer the system lasts (with maintenance/repair), the better.

While these look very attractive due to high performance and low power consumption (which means a lower electric bill over time), durability doesn't appear to be guaranteed...
If the flash chips fail because reasons, how am I supposed to repair them?

Until there isn't a good M1 competitor, I'm not happy...

It's the exact *opposite* of planned obsolescence. The only component(s) of this thing that can reasonably be expected to wear out are the raw flash chips....that just so happen to be mounted on removable modules.

They're not "standard" modules, but that's because no standard modules exist that only have raw chips. Most have the controller onboard too, but the controller in this case is integrated into the M1 die for performance.

Still, when your current ones wear out you can go to apple and get a fresh set swapped in, unless someone else figures out how to stick some similar flash chips on a little square of PCB in the meantime.

[Developer12]

If you're *really* concerned about the flash wearing out, you can leave your boot partition on it and move your root partition to an external drive. It'll also help get around the fact the current M1 SSD firmware is really slow at syncing writes.

[tildearrow]

If you're *really* concerned about the flash wearing out, you can leave your boot partition on it and move your root partition to an external drive. It'll also help get around the fact the current M1 SSD firmware is really slow at syncing writes.

That was my plan (run Linux off external drive), but the problem is Asahi currently doesn't support USB 3.0 which means it will be utterly slow after getting past the initramfs...

[yurikoles]

Michael, there is a typo, missing whitespace.

driver.Apple's

[lorenzo321]

Very nice to see that the support for these machines is improving more and more thanks to the huge community of Linux developers.

These M1 machines will inevitably kick the bucket some day, especially with Apple's reputation of planned obsolescence, so having some Linux support will be miles better than an outdated Mac OS.