Intel unveils Optane SSDs: 7 times the performance of traditional SSDs

SSDs, fast as they may be, are still much of a muchness – based on NAND Flash technology and sporting a number of technical disadvantages.

Chiefly among those are shorter life spans than mechanical hard drives, owing to the limited number of times flash memory can go through program-erase cycles, and a lot of required background processing and optimisation that needs doing every time a deletion call is made.

The finite write/rewrite nature of flash memory, as well as the fact that entire blocks need to be erased, rather than individual bits, meaning a lot of time is wasted moving around files that need to be kept to other blocks, really hampers SSD progress.

3D stacking and an evolution of the technology has allowed for larger and larger, and generally more reliable SSDs, take Samsung’s V-NAND process as an example. But there’s only so far you can take the technology.

Intel, in partnership with Micron, knew that all too well and has developed 3D Xpoint Memory as a result.

And the Optane drives they power should blow us away.

Announced last month, 3D Xpoint Memory offers some very serious advantages over NAND Flash.

1000x the endurance and speed, and 10x the density is nothing to scoff at, but it gets better.

Owing to the multiple uses of 3D Xpoint, Intel has announced that along with all new SSDs, they’re working on DIMMs as well, so we may very well see 3D Xpoint-powered RAM in the future.

For the moment, however, we’re interested in the SSDs – for now, the RAM isn’t all that viable for home PCs. Fast as 3D Xpoint is, DRAM is a heck of a lot faster.

We also care about their new SSDs because Optane SSDs, Optane being the name given to components powered by 3D Xpoint, creams traditional SSDs.

These are the facts:

The Optane SSD was able to achieve 7.2x times more IOPS at low queue depth and upto 5.21 times the IOPs of conventional SSDs at high queue depths.
An Optane Technology based SSD has 10x times the density of conventional SSD drives.
The marketing material also claims it is 1000x faster than the competition available on the market but it isn’t clear to what exactly they are referring to – a good guess would be latency, as opposed to bandwidth.
Optane SSDs will have 1000x the endurance – which, if true, should mean the device has virtually unlimited life span for practical purposes.

Thanks WCCF Tech. Impressed?

Like WCCF Tech noted, IOPs refers to the performance of the SSDs internal components, but not how capable those components are at transferring data from one to another.

Still, that means a noticeably faster SSD with far less latency and all without the loss of durability – it should translate into longer life spans in fact.

And if the density of Optane drives is anything like Intel suggests, then expect much larger capacities to be developed on a quicker timeframe.

It could very well mean the end of traditional SSDs as we know it. Sayonara NAND.