PCI-E Bootable Drive Compatibility

[bigdogchris]

With the rise of NVMe and PCI-E based SSD's, being able to boot from PCI-E based storage is going to become much more important to enthusiast in the coming years.

PCI-E based storage solutions typically claim boot compatibility is 'board specific' or "up to the manufacturer". That tells me there is no chipset constraint with booting from PCI-E, other than being UEFI (which everything is now anyways).

Is there a rule of thumb for PCI-E bootable and NVMe compatibility for chipsets?

I would expect that eventually the 9 Series boards could be flashed to allow NVMe interface to be enabled on the PCI-E bus, but I can't get a firm grip on what chipsets support PCI-E based booting to begin with.

 

[darkunitzero]

Bootable NVMe is supported starting at UEFI 2.4.

http://www.nvmexpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013-FMS-NVMe-Track.pdf

 

[bigdogchris]

Good info, thanks. Now to look to see if there's a way to identify which boards are 2.4 (2013) and which are 2.1 (2007) before you buy

Based on timeline of the 2.4 spec being finalized, it's possible 8 series has support since the spec was finalized right around the time 8 series came out. 9 series, I would think, should have support since it just came out.