Stefan Mileschin

Intel's Optane products so far fall into one of two categories. At the high end is the flagship P4800X enterprise SSD and its derivatives for the enthusiast market. At the low end are the small M.2 modules intended primarily for caching use. It's this latter category that is being upgraded from PCIe 3x2 to a PCIe 3x4 host interface, moving the cache drives and small Optane SSDs more toward the mainstream NVMe SSD market.

Based on leaked roadmaps, we know that the original Optane Memory and its refresh Optane Memory M10 are being replaced by the new Optane Memory M15, codenamed Carson Beach. The Optane SSD 800P is being replaced by the new Optane SSD 815P, codenamed Bombay Beach. Capacity options are changing slightly for the M15 cache modules, which offer 16GB to 128GB in M.2 2280 form factor and 16GB to 64GB in M.2 2242 size. The Optane SSD 815P will be available in the same 58GB and 118GB capacities as the 800P.

It appears that Intel is continuing with the rather confusing mismatch of advertised capacities between the Optane Memory and Optane SSD products. In reality, the Optane Memory 64GB and Optane SSD 58GB products have the exact same usable capacity, and the same will hold true for the 128GB vs 118GB. The smaller advertised capacities are more in line with how SSD vendors traditionally relate claimed GB to actual usable capacity, while the Optane Memory parts are advertising the nominal raw capacity of their 3D XPoint memory without reflecting space used for error correction or spare area for defect and wear management.

The system requirements for the above Optane products are unchanged from their predecessors. Optane Memory caching requires a Kaby Lake or newer platform and the use of Intel's Optane Memory storage drivers for Windows. Otherwise, both the M15 and 815P are standard NVMe SSDs that can be used as regular data or boot drives in any system that supports flash-based NVMe SSDs.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13825...ds-coming-soon