Intel Optane SSD 900P Specs - Launches end of October

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/30/2017 09:42 AM | source: | 15 comment(s)

Yesterday we posted some new about a leaked Intel 2018 roadmap. In the roadmap, that roadmap includes a launch for 240 GB and 480 GB sized Optane 900P units. They will release at the end of October. No specs where given, but I just remembered that we have the specs for these already as we posted about it back in April.

The launch date of 27 October coincides with CitizenCon, the exhibitioin slash gathering for the game Star Citizen fans. The new Optane SSDs will initially become available in capacities of 240 and 480 GB. And here is the slide we posted about back in April holding all relevant information:

The 3D XPoint memory based SSDs will get sequential read and wrie performance at a suggested 2.500 and 2.000 MB/s with roughly 500K IOPS based on 4K random writes. The power consumption of these devices will be running up-to a high 18 Watt, in Idle that is 5 Watts. The SSD will become available through add-in card (PCI-Express) as well as a U.2. interface based 2.5" unit.

As you can see from the image, Intel merged its storage chips on a PCI-Express x4 Gen 3 add-in card. Intel Optane SSD 900P prices are currently unknown; but they won't be cheap, that seems to be a fair assumption.

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nosirrahx
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#5477233 Posted on: 09/30/2017 12:03 PM

Who are these being marketed to?

"Wait a while longer to buy a SSD that is slower than the ones you can buy today."

Ricepudding
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#5477242 Posted on: 09/30/2017 01:21 PM

Optane really would have been great 5+ years ago when SSD's were still fairly new and not many people had them, these would have sold like hot cakes to actually boost HDD speeds.... But typically everyone has SSD's in their machines now, even if it's only a small one to hold the OS. it's quite hard to buy a laptop of a computer that doesn't come with one

Kaarme
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#5477308 Posted on: 09/30/2017 08:39 PM

Surely these sizes aren't anymore meant for the same automatic caching thing as the 16/32GB models? These are already real SSD sizes, so they would have room for a direct install of the OS and some programs already. In other words, shouldn't these work also on systems not sporting Kaby Lake era chipsets or newer?

nizzen
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#5477377 Posted on: 10/01/2017 01:10 AM

I'm waiting for the 1500GB 900p

nizzen
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#5477379 Posted on: 10/01/2017 01:11 AM

Failed product even before getting out..

For people that don't know what it is

Alvaro66
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#5477391 Posted on: 10/01/2017 03:00 AM

Failed product even before getting out..

Agreed, and it's another money grabber product from intel, maybe 2000$ in the us and perhaps 3000 euros on europe.
Anyway I'll wait till they reach those announced "1000 times faster" than NAND, and be at the current SSD prices. OK OK maybe I'll settle for 100 times faster. That will be good enough

Anyway it's not only Intel's fault for being what they are, a lot of consumers go for Intel. Those consumers don't understand if there is no competition Intel would still be selling Core 2 duo's, and perhaps selling celerons at 350$. Now as an Intel consumer isn't that great? So great I can't resist buying 2 or 3 of those Celerons and have a big smile on my face

Mineria
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#5477393 Posted on: 10/01/2017 03:10 AM

For people that don't know what it is

Why go for one of these over a 960 Pro or EVO for that sake if the price isn't lower?

user1
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#5477401 Posted on: 10/01/2017 04:17 AM

IOps seem very high, though im not sure that someone would notice a difference over a normal ssd, I don't see a market for this, other than for server use.

Agent-A01
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#5477406 Posted on: 10/01/2017 05:04 AM

IOps seem very high, though im not sure that someone would notice a difference over a normal ssd, I don't see a market for this, other than for server use.

'Ultra low latency'

Probably dependent on certain applications.
General use probably won't matter much.

WareTernal
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#5477410 Posted on: 10/01/2017 05:43 AM

Failed product even before getting out..

Sometimes things can appear to be failures when you don't see the big picture.

Who are these being marketed to?

Judging by the slide, we can say it's for "the highest performance Personal Computers and Workstations. If you need 7-8x speed and 1000x endurance then this is the ticket.

Optane really would have been great 5+ years ago when SSD's were still fairly new

Actually it was 9 years ago, and Intel's X-25 was really great. This isn't just a new name for flash memory. It functions differently, and has some advantages.
"There are no transistors involved and it is not electron-based storage."

I'll wait till they reach those announced "1000 times faster" than NAND...OK maybe I'll settle for 100 times faster

3D-XPoint's "read time" is 100 times faster already. It's the slow interfaces presently available that are holding it back. thessdguy.com had a good explanation of what is holding it back:
1. The time needed to transfer the data across the PCIe interface
2. Delays from the host computer’s PCIe port to the arrival of the data at the processor pins
3. The amount of time the operating system’s I/O stack requires to perform a disk read operation

Maybe next year when Cascade Lake comes and people see servers with TERRABYTES of RAM, they will see where this is going. For more info look into "Storage Class Memory" and "NVDIMM"

Dwwolf
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#5477515 Posted on: 10/01/2017 06:14 PM

This really is a product that deserves a place on a motherboard with much closer integration to RAM and the CPU.

3d Xpoint is closer to RAM than typical NAND based SSD products and could function more as a cache for RAM.

Mineria
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#5477574 Posted on: 10/02/2017 12:52 AM

IOps seem very high, though im not sure that someone would notice a difference over a normal ssd, I don't see a market for this, other than for server use.

The black Optane is for server use, think in direction non-volatile memory cache, there will be some 16-32GB consumer versions too, although I would consider 32GB not being enough and there is still a PCIe limit to overcome.

SweenJM
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#5477606 Posted on: 10/02/2017 07:30 AM

i will be interested to see what the durability is in real life. I am something of an amd fanboy, but intel makes nice stuff i think. Their NICs and their SSDs are pretty nice.

nosirrahx
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#5477715 Posted on: 10/02/2017 04:24 PM

Judging by the slide, we can say it's for "the highest performance Personal Computers and Workstations. If you need 7-8x speed and 1000x endurance then this is the ticket.

The endurance part of this seems to be getting less relevant all the time as SSDs are already outliving their time to replacement due to other technology improvements.

The negative Optane reviews on newegg seem to imply that not many people actually understand this product or what it is for.

It kind of feels like Intel let regular consumers think this was a cool thing to buy just to start getting the product into the market.

Just checked the Amazon reviews and you should read them for yourself because IMO it looks like a lot of 1 star and a lot of fake 5 star reviews. The wording on the 5 star reviews looks like marketing material, not consumer reviews.

EDIT:

And at the time of this post literally 0 4 star reviews.

Venix
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#5477737 Posted on: 10/02/2017 05:05 PM

The vast improvement from hdd to ssd came from the average seek time from 9-15 ms down to 0,5 or less read speed was not as a big factor 200 or even 100 is enough for a snappy os (not saying that it does not help) so i will ask this for optane does it bring down the average seek time of a file? If yes then read and write speeds are nice but secondary . (At the price they are comming i do not really like em)

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