The unveiling of Intel Optane took place in August of last year, and ever since we have speculated about the possibility of an SSD capable of outperforming its direct competitors in latency and durability, as well as functioning as an extension of system memory. Everything seemed to indicate that the first step for the hardware would be in PCI Express format, and after some delays, here it is: the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X of 375 GB with 3D XPoint technology.
The First Intel Optane Drive
Intel has been exploring the territory of solid-state drives for some time, but after joining forces with the folks at Micron, the Santa Clara giant became convinced it could do better. The market focused its efforts on tackling the capacity problem, but that has been largely minimized, allowing priorities to shift. That said, Intel and Micron have been perfecting the magic recipe of their 3D XPoint technology for a year and a half. The promises are huge: a new non-volatile memory, almost as fast as conventional RAM, and at a fraction of the cost. In August 2016 we learned about the commercial profile of 3D XPoint: Intel Optane. A few photographs taken almost secretly and a couple of benchmarks were all we received. The wait grew long, and truth be told, the company gave no official explanation for the delays, but the first product is already among us: Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X.
At first glance it is an SSD with a PCI Express 3.0 x4 interface, so its final design didn't stray far from what we saw in the prototype. The capacity of this initial model is 375 gigabytes, but Intel has already confirmed that there will be variants of 750 GB and 1.5 TB before the end of the year, as well as an alternative based on the U.2 interface.
Performance and Durability
The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X delivers latency below ten microseconds, much lower than what is seen in traditional SSDs, and this trend extends to very heavy load situations. Another point in favor of the DC P4800X is its per-byte granularity in reading or writing. In other words, Optane can read and/or write individual bytes, while NAND memory operates in pages of 512, 2,048, or 4,096 bytes. Write amplification problems are virtually eliminated, and that translates into greater durability: 30 complete unit writes per day, or 12.3 petabytes over the three-year warranty that Intel will offer for this limited edition (the plan is to extend it to five years).
Memory Extension and Pricing
Intel did not provide sequential performance data, but a couple of leaks that began circulating in February point to around 2.4 GB/s reading and 2 GB/s writing, numbers that current NAND can surpass under similar conditions. The option to use Optane in the same way as memory depends on a software solution, Intel Memory Drive Technology, whose goal is to integrate the drive into the memory subsystem, so that the operating system and applications see and use it as additional DRAM. The implementation is complex, has some technical limitations, and is sold separately. That brings us to prices: $1,520 for the SSD, or $1,951 with the IMDT license included. At four dollars per gigabyte of 3D XPoint, the end consumer will have to wait a while...
