Intel’s Optane memory technology is super-speedy… and super expensive. So the first few consumer-oriented Optane solutions the company has offered were 16GB to 64GB SSDs designed to be paired with a separate SSD or hard drive.
That’s great if you have a computer with plenty of room for multiple storage devices. But what if there’s only room for a single M.2 2280 SSD?
That’s where Intel’s new Optane memory H10 SSD comes in. It’s a single M.2 SSD that combines Intel Optane technology with Intel QLC 3D NAND storage.
In other words, it’s a single stick that offers the speed of Optane but the higher capacity storage typically associated with NAND flash SSDs.
Intel says a notebook with Optane memory H10 should be able to open media files 90 percent faster while multitasking, launch games 60 percent faster, or open documents up to twice as fast as a system when compared with a computer with a TLC 3D NAND SSD.
But interestingly, while the new storage solution offers significantly higher random read speeds than a typical SSD, AnandTech notes Optane memory H10 appears to be much slower than Intel’s standalone 32GB Optane Memory solution. I guess something had to give when squeezing everything onto a single stick.
Intel will offer at least three configurations at first:
- 16GB Optane memory + 256GB SSD storage
- 32GB Optane memory + 512GB SSD storage
- 32GB Optane memory + 1TB SSD storage.
Intel says PC makers including Acer, Asus, Dell, and HP will begin offering laptops sporting 15 watt Intel Core U-series chips and Optane memory H10 during the second quarter of 2019.
We could also see the new SSDs show up in mini desktop computers and all-in-one PCs in the future.
via Intel
Just say NO to boot drives with less than 32b of storage! 32gb is even too small with Windows installed and 10gb is used up by a recovery partition. You’ll run out of space the first time Microsoft releases it’s next Update. 32gb might be enough for a Chromebook or Linux, but disk space for Windows PCs has been problematic for over 30 years. I think the issue is Microsoft’s licensing. They give away free licenses to PCs with 32gb of storage or less. That’s ok, until you read the customer ratings on Amazon with lots of complaints about running out of disk space on these. Sure a 32gb C: drive and a larger D: drive sounds good in theory, but the C: drive will still run out of space when the next Microsoft update comes along. Microsoft needs to change their licensing to include 64gb of storage if they want people to buy these cheap PCs.
Whoa there, partner. The two are combined into a single drive letter (page 41): https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/memory-and-storage/IntelSolidStateDriveToolboxUserGuide.pdf
I hate announcements that don’t mention price
or availability date. Until you can buy them
somewhere, it’s all vaporware tome.
Reminds me of ReadyBoost. A USB drive used for improving hard disk performance. But in this case it is phase-change memory improving flash SSD performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost
It’s actually more like the old hybrid drives that were part hard disc and part SSD. They didn’t speed things up much, and I don’t expect these to work that well either.
Well said. A hybrid drive is a closer comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive