Intel has Optane SSDs coming to the desktop for the Kaby Lake series, but it chose to use the introductory devices for caching purposes. Caching increases performance over a standard hard drive, but in many cases, we suspect using a normal SSD as the primary storage device will be a better overall solution. Intel hasn't indicated when it will bring standard Optane drives, which you can use as a normal boot volume, to the consumer market. The initial revisions of 3D XPoint devices will carry a higher-than-SSD price tag, which likely led to Intel's decision to bring only low-capacity caching volumes to the consumer market--at least for now.
The enterprise isn't as sensitive to high prices if the value proposition is compelling enough, and as such, Intel's 375GB Cold Stream Optane DC P4800X is destined for the data center. The SSD features the standard PCIe 3.0 x4 connection and offers up to 2,400/2,000 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput over the NVMe interface. Cold Stream also blows in with up to 550,000/500,000 random read/write IOPS. The performance figures, while impressive, do not entirely encompass the benefits of using 3D XPoint. The new speedy media offers amazing performance at low queue depths and unwavering mixed workload performance, which are the most important metrics for actual applications. We cover some of the finer points of the 3D XPoint performance profile in our 3D XPoint Guide.
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