Intel has updated it website with now Optane landing page that discusses the first iteration of ‘Intel Optane Memory’, which appears to be the 8000p Series. The site does not cover the upcoming enterprise parts like the 375GB P4800X. The site focuses on the far smaller 16GB and 32GB ‘System Accelerator’ M.2 modules.
While only two lanes of PCIe 3.0, these modules turn in some impressive performance, but the capacities when using only one or two (16GB each) XPoint units preclude an Windows OS install for now. Instead, these will be used, presumably in combination with a newer form of Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology driver, as a caching layer meant as an HDD accelerator:
While the random write performance and endurance of these parts blow any NAND-based SSD out of the water, the 2-lane bottleneck holds them back compared to high-end NVMe NAND SSDs, so we will likely see this first consumer iteration of Intel Optane Memory in OEM systems equipped with hard disks as their primary storage. A very quick 32GB caching layer should help speed things up considerably for the majority of typical buyers of these types of mobile and desktop systems, while still keeping the total cost below that for a large capacity NAND SSD as primary storage.
