NVMe speeds vs. SATA and SAS: Which is fastest?
Search Storage, Monday, November 10th, 2025
The NVMe protocol is tailor-made to make SSDs fast. Get up to speed on NVMe performance and how it compares to the SATA and SAS interfaces, plus recent specifications.
The NVMe protocol has become the industry standard for enabling communication between a computer's host software and an SSD or other type of non-volatile memory subsystem. NVMe speeds are substantially better than those of traditional storage protocols, such as SAS and SATA.
The non-volatile memory express standard is based on a family of specifications maintained and published by NVM Express Inc., a consortium of more than 100 tech companies and industry leaders. The set of specifications defines how the host software communicates with NVM across supported transports.