Intel releases Optane SSD P1600X designed for startup, caching, and logging workloads
Intel announced the launch of the new Optane SSD P1600X series for data centers, specifically designed for startup, caching, and logging workloads. This series of products does not have a huge capacity, but its performance and extreme durability ensure the high reliability and cost efficiency required by the workload.
The Intel Optane SSD P1600X series only provides two capacities of 58GB and 118GB. It is not used for storing large amounts of data, but used as a system disk or set as a cache to improve the user experience or meet server/data center QoS requirements. This series of Optane products all adopt the M.2 2280 specification and use the PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface. Intel officially stated that it will maintain compatibility with original machines and servers that support the PCI-E 4.0 standard.
Image: Intel
Compared with today’s common solid-state drives, the performance of the Optane SSD P1600X series is not outstanding. Its continuous read and write speeds are 1870 MB/s and 1050 MB/s, respectively, and random read and write are 426K IOPS and 243K IOPS, respectively. Unless you use multiple Optane SSD P1600X solid-state drives in RAID 0 mode, you can get better performance. However, this is also where 3D XPoint flash memory can play its unique advantages. The Optane SSD P1600X series can withstand six full disk writes per day (6 DWPD) within five years, and provide up to 2 million hours of mean time between failures. Intel said that its average read latency is 7μs, and the average write latency is 10μs. It can be said that the latency is extremely low.
It should be said that this product launched by Intel is a bit surprising, after all, there is uncertainty in the supply of 3D XPoint flash memory. Micron has reached an agreement with Texas Instruments to sell its 3D XPoint flash memory chip factory in Lehi, Utah. Intel hopes that the fab in Dalian, China, can take over and continue to produce 3D XPoint flash memory before it is officially transferred to SK Hynix to meet the needs of some customers.
