Details leak about Intel Optane DC P4800X NVMe SSD

A bunch of details leaked about the upcoming Intel Optane DC P4800X "Cold Stream" NVMe SSD, which will be the chip giant's first SSD with the new 3D XPoint memory. This particular model is for the datacenter market but it may hold some clues about what we can expect from future consumer versions.

The P4800X features 375GB of 3D XPoint memory, it offers 2400MB/s sequential read speeds, 2000MB/s sequential write speeds, 550,000 random 4KB read, and 500,000 random 4KB write operations per second. In terms of latency there's a massive improvement versus NAND fash memory. The P4800X provides sub-10 microsecond read/write latency and a sub-.150/.200 milliseconds 99.999% Quality of Service (QoS) read/write measurement at QD16. As Tom's Hardware points out, Intel's fastest 450GB SSD (the DC P3520) offers 130/50 microseconds of read/write latency and a 99.99% read/write latency of 1.976/6.752 milliseconds at QD16.

Also quite interesting are the endurance specifications. The P4800X lists 30 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day), three times as high as typical NAND-based SSDs. Next we learn this 3D XPoint-based SSD can handle 12.3PB of data during its lifetime, which is 21x more than the 590TB listed on the spec sheet of the Intel DC P3520 SSD! Further details can be read at Tom's Hardware.

Intel has Optane SSDs coming to the desktop for the Kaby Lake series, but it chose to use the introductory devices for caching purposes. Caching increases performance over a standard hard drive, but in many cases, we suspect using a normal SSD as the primary storage device will be a better overall solution. Intel hasn't indicated when it will bring standard Optane drives, which you can use as a normal boot volume, to the consumer market. The initial revisions of 3D XPoint devices will carry a higher-than-SSD price tag, which likely led to Intel's decision to bring only low-capacity caching volumes to the consumer market--at least for now.