Optane 900P SSD, Successor to the Intel 750 Series

[prickly]

"Industry contacts" have told TweakTown that a successor to Intel's well received 750 series NVMe drives will launch within weeks. The second generation Optane 900P SSDs will be available in both the U.2 and AIC (PCI-E 3.0) form factors, with capacities of 280, 480, 960 and 1500 GBs. Like the Intel 750 series, the Optane 900P has enterprise roots, namely Intel's ridiculously expensive 375GB P4800X; which we covered earlier. As the 900P is aimed at consumers, maybe more accurately prosumers, prices should be "affordable".


Slide courtesy of TweakTown



Optane 900p

• (Rumored) Sequential read/write speeds 2.5/2 GB/s
• (Rumored) Random IOPS read/write 550,000/500,000

If accurate, the sequential write and random IOPS write speeds of the Optane 900p are substantially higher than the Intel 750 series, whose performance varied with drive capacity. It is also unconfirmed at this point, but the 900p might be compatible with AMD X399 motherboards, given that some motherboard manufactures have included a U.2 connector.

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[Valantar]

Optane 600p? I do believe you just invented a new product series there. Also, those 600p specs are definitely typo-town, unless they somehow managed to exceed the PCIe spec by ... oh, roughly 100x.

 

[Parn]

Optane on AMD X399 just because some of them carry a U.2 port? Are you sure?

I thought you need Intel 200-series at minimum to support Optane.

 

[Prima.Vera]

If they can beat Samsung's EVO on performance/price ratio then I will consider one of those. But I very much doubt it.

 

[bug]

Hm, 5W@idle is not going to jive well with portables.

 

[jabbadap]

Optane on AMD X399 just because some of them carry a U.2 port? Are you sure?

I thought you need Intel 200-series at minimum to support Optane.

Uhm even those 16GB/32GB m.2 optane memory cache drives works with the x399 as normal pcie drives. What needs that 200 -series motherboard is that intel's memory cache solutions.

 

[prickly]

Optane 600p? I do believe you just invented a new product series there. Also, those 600p specs are definitely typo-town, unless they somehow managed to exceed the PCIe spec by ... oh, roughly 100x.

Thanks, deleted that bit.

 

[R0H1T]

Hm, 5W@idle is not going to jive well with portables.

Look at the 18W active power draw

 

[RejZoR]

Uhm even those 16GB/32GB m.2 optane memory cache drives works with the x399 as normal pcie drives. What needs that 200 -series motherboard is that intel's memory cache solutions.

Or you can set it up as a hybrid caching solution using software (like PrimoCache). Intel chipset is only needed when trying to use official RST support. Then again, doing it using normal SSD and PimoCache would yield nearly the same results for less money and with larger SSD cache...

 

[bug]

Look at the 18W active power draw

I saw that, too, obviously, but I thought it will spend most of the time idling...

 

[R0H1T]

I saw that, too, obviously, but I thought it will spend most of the time idling...

Still pretty high compared to most NVMe drives today, the only advantage being Random IOPS & latency(?) I guess.

 

[bug]

Still pretty high compared to most NVMe drives today, the only advantage being Random IOPS & latency(?) I guess.

Pretty high is an understatement. Looking at the 960EVO, we have ~5.5W average load, 40mW idle and 5mW sleep.
Active power consumption going up is not that big a surprise (we are supposedly getting better performance in return), but the idle numbers are real head-scratchers.

I'm not even sure random IOPS are that big an advantage even. I mean, the only quote is 500-550k, but even the 960EVO will do over 300k at QD32. It depends on which QD we get >500k IOPS.

 

[Solidstate89]

Hm, 5W@idle is not going to jive well with portables.

None of these would work in a portable since their form factors are U.2 and PCI-e add-in cards. Looks like Intel is still avoiding the M.2 form factor.

 

[bug]

None of these would work in a portable since their form factors are U.2 and PCI-e add-in cards. Looks like Intel is still avoiding the M.2 form factor.

You can always solder them onto the motherboard (not the U.2 or the PCIe units, obviously). That's the trend anyway
But point taken.

 

[Vya Domus]

Uses : Gaming

Seriously ?

 

[bug]

Uses : Gaming

Seriously ?

If you have a $50 video card with next to no VRAM, you can still load textures very quickly

 

[Valantar]

Pretty high is an understatement. Looking at the 960EVO, we have ~5.5W average load, 40mW idle and 5mW sleep.
Active power consumption going up is not that big a surprise (we are supposedly getting better performance in return), but the idle numbers are real head-scratchers.

I'm not even sure random IOPS are that big an advantage even. I mean, the only quote is 500-550k, but even the 960EVO will do over 300k at QD32. It depends on which QD we get >500k IOPS.

The power consumption isn't that odd if this has a controller with a crazy-high lane count like the 750 series. The enterprise roots of this would seem to make this likely. More active silicon = more power consumption. If this controller was originally designed for insane IOPS under murderous sustained loads - again, like the 750 controller - I doubt idle power savings were much of a focus.

Of course, it's very pertinent to question the usefulness and value of something like this in the consumer space. I'm definitely passing on this one (not that I can fit one with my ITX motherboard, but I don't want one either ).

 

[Parn]

Uhm even those 16GB/32GB m.2 optane memory cache drives works with the x399 as normal pcie drives. What needs that 200 -series motherboard is that intel's memory cache solutions.

Ahh, I got mixed up between Optane Memory (literally just a fancy name for SSD cache) and Optane SSD. Thanks for clearing this up for me.

 

[Xajel]

Optane on AMD X399 just because some of them carry a U.2 port? Are you sure?

I thought you need Intel 200-series at minimum to support Optane.

That level of support is only intended to make Optane as cache, It will work on any platform that support NVMe as regular NVMe drive.. so X399 or AM4 should work also as long as Optane behave like an actual NVMe.

 

[Parn]

None of these would work in a portable since their form factors are U.2 and PCI-e add-in cards. Looks like Intel is still avoiding the M.2 form factor.

Well even the 960EVO with its 5.5W power draw could heat up quite a bit, a 900p with its 18W power draw is going to fry the nearby components on a motherboard if it was made in M.2. Maybe that's why they are only available in U.2 and PCIe add-in cards.

 

[Valantar]

Well even the 960EVO with its 5.5W power draw could heat up quite a bit, a 900p with its 18W power draw is going to fry the nearby components on a motherboard if it was made in M.2. Maybe that's why they are only available in U.2 and PCIe add-in cards.

...or maybe it's because (as we can see from the images) the controller itself would never fit on an m.2 PCB, let alone the number of flash chips to come close to saturating the channels of the controller. Same reason the 750 series never launched in an m.2 version, in other words.

 

[HimymCZe]

LuL...
... most worthless PCIe extention card gets even less worthy successor.
>Well Done Intel, thats what we needed...

 

[StrayKAT]

Looking forward to what they mean on more "consumer" oriented.

Ahh, I got mixed up between Optane Memory (literally just a fancy name for SSD cache) and Optane SSD. Thanks for clearing this up for me.

It's an old idea, but it's fancy because it's better memory.

I also think SSDs are overrated. The price of good capacity is crap. Some people want 10TB or more, but not the sluggish HDD speed. It's a decent middle ground. I think the only thing that hurts Optane is Kaby Lake requirements. The idea itself doesn't suck.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

Will still wait for proper bench of this new drive up against the current cream of the crop M.2 PCIe SSDs in the market. That'll give it a good competition & see which comes at on top.

 

[Chaitanya]

Pretty high is an understatement. Looking at the 960EVO, we have ~5.5W average load, 40mW idle and 5mW sleep.
Active power consumption going up is not that big a surprise (we are supposedly getting better performance in return), but the idle numbers are real head-scratchers.

I'm not even sure random IOPS are that big an advantage even. I mean, the only quote is 500-550k, but even the 960EVO will do over 300k at QD32. It depends on which QD we get >500k IOPS.

Seems like it is an enthusiast product derived from enterprise product stack. And when it comes to storage in enterprise idling isn't much needed so that power rating will be high along with load consumption. Also these PCI-E drives are targeted towards desktops/workstations and not mobile device like Samsung's 960/950 series of drives.