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Ever since Intel appear that it had created a new type of non-volatile memory in partnership with Micron, dubbed 3D XPoint, there have been questions about how the new retention would perform and what kind of systems might send information technology in the hereafter.

The ostensible draw of alternative memory technologies similar 3D XPoint (Intel markets its drives nether the Optane brand) is that it can offering non-volatile storage performance at speeds more comparable to DRAM, but with better ability consumption. Discussions on cost are less certain — right now, Intel and Micron are focused on introducing the technology and it'll exist fairly expensive for the near-term hereafter. Long-term price is an unknown — the sheer economic system of calibration around NAND wink makes it hard for any new storage applied science to challenge in terms of price-per-GB. Now, however, we accept some idea how Optane will perform, at least in Intel's initial information eye SSD.

Intel-SSD

Intel's P4800X serial is a 375GB drive with sequential read/write speeds of 2400MB/s and 2000MB/southward respectively. Random 4KB IOPS are rated at 550K/southward for reads and 500K/due south for writes. Overclockers3D points out that this compares extremely favorably with Samsung'due south 960 Pro SSD, which offers up to 330K IOPS for random 4KB reads and writes. Notwithstanding, information technology's worth bearing in mind that IOPS are essentially meaningless without a great bargain of data near how the tests were conducted and how the workloads were designed. On their own, they don't tell us much.

Ane affair we exercise know, however, is that Optane tin can deliver excellent operation even with a queue depth of 1. Queue depth refers the number of commands that can be queued within a storage controller at the aforementioned time. A queue depth of 32 is commonly used when testing desktop applications and software, and as y'all can come across, a queue depth of 1 produces poor functioning on an SSD.

SSD-Perf

Queue depth of ane on the left, 32 on the right. CrystalDiskMark is a simple test, but information technology illustrates this effect well plenty.

The graph higher up is from my ain system, using a spare SSD I've got installed. At a queue depth of 32, the SSD is 7.82x faster than with a queue depth of one in 4K random reads. The gap between write speed is less dramatic, but QD=32 is still 2.23x faster than QD=1. Typically, storage workloads stack upward big queue depths and loftier-end hardware controllers tin handle far more than the 32 queues specified in SATA — but if Optane tin evangelize excellent performance at depression queue depths every bit well as high, it could evidence a strong competitor in any workload dominated by such metrics.

These are the first Optane drives, and they're intended for data centers, non consumers. Intel does take plans to make Kaby Lake accelerators available to customers with a Z270 chipset, simply pricing and availability have non been announced.

Now read: How practise SSDs piece of work?