We talked about Intel and Micron’s 3D XPoint storage a couple of times already. 3D Xpoint memory technology is the successor to standard NAND flash memory with an ETA likely in 2017. Intel will call this Storage series the Intel Optane SSD and it will be available in form factors like M.2/NGFF, SATA-Express, PCI-Express (card).
They will makes use of the new NVMe protocol. An early prototype was already demonstrated at IDF and would offer up-to 5.5 times the throughput of NAND flash-based DC P3700 series SSDs, (engineering sample and thus early development). Compared to the queue depth of just 32 commands for AHCI NVMe offers command queue depth of a 65,535 commands. Micron is the co-developer of 3D Xpoint so you may expect Crucial branded SSD drives on this technology as well.
New information has been spotted (net necessarily exciting) as Intel will release two Optane Memory 8000p products based on the new technology at launch, a 16GB and 32GB 3D XPoint storage unit is planned based on M.2 2280 and 2241 form factors. The units would thus use PCI-E 3.0 with two lanes according to Taiwanese website Benchlife. The 32 GB model would reach 1600 MB/s on reads and 500 MB/s on writes whereas the 16GB model would reach 1400 MB/sec and 300 MB/sec. IOPS reads are 300K and 285K respectively with 120K and 70K on writes. To be honest if this is true, then the results do disappoint a little as even the NVMe based Samsung 960 Pro can already reach 3500 MB/sec and 2100 MB/sec on writes (we have a review on the Samsung 960 Pro 1TB next week btw).
Currently there is no information about the actual controller, however we do know that you’ll need a Kaby Lake processor and compatible chipset to be able to run these Optane Memory 8000p units. I don’t know, these might be this first models, but somehow I guess we all expected way more from the prognosed performance ? Next to that the 16GB and 32GB volume sizes are simply way too small to be interesting on the consumer end side of things. Have a peek at the leaked info by clicking on the thumbnail below.
