I find the recruitment information page on that domain rather amusing: http://www.infradead.org/recruitment.html

I read it and even tried to search for his name because apparently he has made important contributions to Linux (he links /usr/src/linux/CREDITS as his CV so...), but couldn't find anything specifically about his work.

Do you happen to know what does he work/has worked on regarding Linux?

He's the lead developer at LinuxMTD (http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/); (no wonder I seem to remember the "infradead" name from somewhere).

More about him, here: http://www.advogato.org/person/dwmw2/

Can someone explain in greater detail what exactly Intel is trying to do here?

It sounds like trying to tunnel NVMe through something that is only connected over an AHCI interface.

I'm not too familiar with this area of PC hardware, but it does seem like their AHCI controller can be configured to act like a PCI bridge with an NVMe device on the other side of it.

Is the unreliable hardware causing problems for Windows users?

Nope, because Intel can just push some binary drivers out and everyone will down it with a gargle.

The kernel patches are refused because the kernel devs expect to maintain the code for as long as there are devices in active use that need it once allowed in.

Thus they demand a proper spec for the device behavior so they can test for breakages down the line. And apparently the patches are already violating AHCI behavior expected by the kernel.

Or at least that is what i got out of reading the short ML thread.

No.

I'm sure there was a post on linux-ide in the same vein. It's frustrating because my XPS 13 is also affected.