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jeffbee parent
> Through all of these efforts, Anobit is promising significant improvements in NAND longevity and reliability.

Every flash controller does this. Modern NAND is just math on a stick. Lots and lots of math.

dontlaugh
Presumably Apple want to be able to guarantee the quality of such logic.

Still sucks that you can’t use standard parts.

daneel_w
Contrary to popular belief, you can run many different off-the-shelf brand NVMe drives on all of the NVMe-fitted Intel Macs. All you need is a passive adapter. My 2017 MacBook Air has a 250GB WD Blue SN570 in it.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2015-mac...

riobard
Not all Intel Macs. Only those without T2 chip, as T2 acts as the storage controller.
Rohansi
And all of the Apple Silicon Macs have them soldered on or use a proprietary module. They make way too much from storage upgrades to include an M.2 slot.
daneel_w
The on-board storage of their MacBooks is as much, if not more, driven by their design vision. They didn't make these things record thin to get an excuse to use surface-mounted RAM and storage. I don't agree with it, but I understand it.
jeffbee OP
Sure, and I agree with that goal. In fact I would like NVMe controllers to simply not exist. The operating system should manage raw flash, using host algorithms that I can study in the the source code.
nine_k
How do you think it would be electrically connected to the CPU?

Same thing with DDR5: the electrical layer is a beast, it's a reason enough to require its own controller.

daneel_w
> How do you think it would be electrically connected to the CPU?

On the CPU's PCIe bus. NVMe drives are PCIe devices, designed specifically to facilitate such interfacing.

Edit: Pardon, misread the actual statement you responded to. Of course one shouldn't hook NAND directly to the CPU. I'll leave my response for whatever value the info has.

gruturo
I'm with you, but.... no. At the level where the controller is operating, things are no longer digital. Capacity (as in farads, not bytes), voltage, crosstalk, debouncing, traces behaving like antennas, terminations, what have you. Analog values, temperature dependencies, RF interference. Stuff best dealt with custom logic placed as close as possible to it.
jeffbee OP
The physical interface controller can exist to that extent, of course. But I think the command interface it should present to the host system should be a physical one, not a logical translation. The host should be totally aware of the layout of the flash devices, and should command the things that the devices are actually capable of doing: erase this, write that, read this.

We already see the demand for this in the latest NVMe protocol spec that allows the host to give placement hints. But this is a half-measure that suggests what systems really want, which is not to vaguely influence the device but instead to tell it exactly what to do.

mixmastamyk
Interesting… I see no reason to be downvoted.

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