Intel Optane with 3D XPoint memory blows current PCIe SSDs out of the water

Some more information has arrived about Optane, Intel's upcoming memory and storage platform based on the new 3D XPoint memory. The chip giant said solid state disks and datacenter server memory based on 3D XPoint will hit the market in 2016, but it will take some time for the technology to reach its full potential.

While theoretically capable of delivering performance of up to 1,000 times higher than today's NAND flash memory, the first versions of Optane will deliver more modest gains, which will still be quite revolutionary by the way.

In a live demonstration at the IDF, the Optane PCIe SSD prototype delivered 5-7x higher IOPS performance than a high-end Intel P3700 SSD!

The prototype drive, which will be branded Intel Optane when it arrives, was shown running a number of workloads in IOMeter, side by side with an Intel SSD DC3700 series enterprise-class PCIe SSD. Throughout the demo, the Optane / 3D Xpoint drive was roughly 5 – 7x faster than the DC3700, which is no small feat. Those numbers don’t come close to 3D Xpoint’s potential, but then again, the demo system was using today’s technology.

We're very curious how the Optane will be priced and when we'll see the first consumer versions, it definitely looks like this is going to be very big in the future.