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by marcan_42 1772 days ago
Yes, the raw NAND storage modules are connected over PCIe on all M1 machines, to dedicated root ports that are behind ANS. As far as I can tell ANS implements (parts of?) the FTL and data striping and other high-level features, and effectively RAIDs together the underlying storage modules into a single unified NVMe interface. So in this sense, the PCIe here is just an implementation detail, the physical/logical interface Apple chose to connect its Flash modules to the built-in non-volatile storage controller in the M1.
1 comments

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Then this unified MMIO NVMe is "just" emulated inside ANS.