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Intel’s long teased and highly anticipated 3D Xpoint technology has finally made an appearance in the form of the P4800X Optane SSD. The drive is now shipping to selected customers with a 375Gb capacity. Intel claims the new Optane SSD offers improved throughput, lower latency and improved endurance. The write endurance is particularly valuable for enterprise customers with an expected lifetime of 12.3 Petabytes written.
Intel has very high hopes for its Optane technology which it claims can eventually replace conventional SSD’s and DRAM. Intel has previously spruiked about potential benefits including being up to 1000 times faster than traditional NAND, whilst being cheaper and consuming less power. Conventional memory is volatile, meaning it doesn’t retain data when it is powered off. Optane based memory would retains its data. Unfortunately if you have an older system, for now you are out of luck with only the new Kaby Lake platform capable of supporting Optane.
While there are still a lot of unknowns about how Optane works and how it will be implemented, we are getting closer to actual products. The P4800X drive is shipping in a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe form factor with additional form factors rolling out in Q2. Widespread availability of the P4800X is expected in the second half of the year.
Source: Intel
