Linux 6.13 Rolling Out NVMe 2.1 Support & NVMe Rotational Media

All of the block subsystem changes were sent out today for the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel, including a prominent set of NVMe additions.

Jens Axboe sent out all of the block subsystem feature updates today for Linux 6.13, which include a number of NVMe additions worth pointing out. First up, Linux 6.13 now declares itself to be in compliance with the recently introduced NVMe 2.1 specification. The NVMe 2.1 specification was published back in August with additions around live migration of PCIe NVMe controllers between NVM subsystems, host-direct data placement for SSDs, support for offloading some host processing to NVMe storage devices, NVMe over Fabrics zoning, security enhancements, improved manageability, and other changes.

With Linux 6.13 there is now implemented within the NVMe code the ID namespace for NVM command set, active command set NS list, supported log pages, supported features log, CRTO property, endurance groups, CSI identify NS, and other changes as mandated by the NVM Express 2.1 specification.

Linux 6.13 also brings NVMe rotational support with NVMe now supporting rotational media. Rotational storage devices like hard drives have a "rotational" bit within one of the namespace data structures that is now properly checked for. The rotational support was introduced back in the NVMe 2.0 specification.

The NVMe code for Linux 6.13 additionally brings host memory buffer allocation enhancements, target persistent reservation support, persistent reservation tracing, and better volatile cache detection.

The block subsystem at large also brings RAID5 improvements to the MD code, support for manually defining embedded partition tables, prep support for file-system atomic writes, and other changes.

See the block pull request for the full list of feature changes for Linux 6.13.