NVMe ranges from 2-6x the speed of SSD based storage. So isn't this exactly what you want for professional video editing? I mean, performance is king right?
Well, yes… but NVMe isn't quite ready for primetime in large capacity storage. Why is this? 3 Reasons
- Bottlenecks
- Capacity
- Form Factor
Let's take a look at each.
Bottlenecks - If there is one thing that holds back the fastest technologies, it's… all the other technologies.
Removing bottlenecks requires, motherboards, PCIe lanes, Operating Systems, BIOS and more to update.
Right now we are still at a point where a cool 4x benchmark means nothing when it's put in a 10GbE environment behind a bunch of editors.
That adds up to a 4x cost increase for 1x performance.
Capacity- Many high performance systems are still being built on standard hard drives, because SSDs are too much per Terabyte. Multiple that by 3 and there is your cost for the same NVMe storage.
Form Factor- The majority of NVMe drives are a form factor known as M2, which is designed for use directly with a motherboard. It basically looks like RAM.
The U2 form factor is designed for external storage and RAID use. That said, this form factor is not like HDDs and SSDs where you can just pop it into your existing system. You need a whole new system with new connectivity that only supports U2 based storage.
NVMe is very cool and VERY fast, however, we are still several years away from it being the right choice for video editors.
