Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 NVMe Boot Enters Beta

How do you boot your Raspberry Pi? The vast majority of us will use a microSD card, some may use a USB drive as a boot device. With the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 we saw a PCIe 1x slot appear on the official carrier board and intrepid hackers such as Jeff Geerling have been pushing what this board can achieve. In Geerling's latest video he tests out recently announced beta instructions for booting a Compute Module 4 directly from NVMe.

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The Compute Module 4 was released in Q4 2020 and it was designed for use in embedded applications, and so custom carrier boards are used to break out the functionality that we require.  Geerling's tests were conducted using a MirkoPC, a Compute Module 4 carrier board with built in M.2 NVMe slot running at PCIe x1 Gen2. The MirkoPC is not the only Compute Module 4 carrier offering NVMe storage. Piunora is an alternative that squeezes a Compute Module 4 and NVMe storage onto a board no larger than an Arduino Uno. Should you wish to use NVMe on the official Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 IO Board then you will require an adaptor for the PCIe interface.

There is no word on how long we have to wait for NVMe support to officially arrive.

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Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".