Wednesday, August 19th 2015
Intel Readies First Consumer SSD Based on 3D Xpoint Memory
Intel plans to launch the first consumer SSD based on its new 3D Xpoint memory technology, a successor to NAND flash which promises exponential gains in performance and capacity, some time in 2016. The Intel-branded drive will be called Intel Optane, will come in modern form-factors such as M.2/NGFF, SATA-Express, PCI-Express (add-on card), and will take advantage of the new NVMe protocol.
Early prototypes of Optane demoed at IDF already offer up to 5.5 times the throughput of NAND flash-based DC P3700 series SSDs, and we're only talking about single-queue performance. Compared to the queue depth of just 32 commands for AHCI, NVMe offers command queue depth of a staggering 65,535 commands. Since Micron Technology is the co-developer of 3D Xpoint, it's likely that we'll also see Micron/Crucial branded drives based on this tech.
Early prototypes of Optane demoed at IDF already offer up to 5.5 times the throughput of NAND flash-based DC P3700 series SSDs, and we're only talking about single-queue performance. Compared to the queue depth of just 32 commands for AHCI, NVMe offers command queue depth of a staggering 65,535 commands. Since Micron Technology is the co-developer of 3D Xpoint, it's likely that we'll also see Micron/Crucial branded drives based on this tech.