Intel announced the new Optane Memory M15 which is intended for caching use. It is equipped with large capacity, fast speed and a boosted performance than the previous generation. The 3D XPoint memory has been added to an M.2 form factor module of the new Intel NVMe SSD. And you can find four PCI Express (PCIe) lanes on Intel Optane Memory M15.
At Computex 2019, Intel displayed a bunch of new products and technologies: Core i9-9900KS Special Edition processor, 10-nanometer Ice Lake CPUs, Project Athena laptops, and Optane Memory M15. Today, I’ll mainly talk about the new Intel Optane Memory NVMe SSD.
NVM Express Is A New Interface For Computer Communication.
Intel Optane Memory M15: 3D XPoint on PCIe 3.0 x4
The Intel Optane Memory M15 is a new and faster Optane Memory product which is equipped with a M.2 form factor and has been improved a lot in performance, speed, and capacity. Compared to Optane Memory M10 and previous Optane Memory, the controller of the M15 has been improved; in this way, the PCIe link has been widen from 2 lanes to 4 lanes so as to improve performance significantly.
This new Intel NVMe SSD is considered as a fast caching device to speed up the responsiveness of files you access most frequently from SSDs and large hard drives.
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Throughput
The maximum throughput of the new Intel M.2 SSD is still lower than that of the high-end NAND flash based SSDs at high queue depths. But Intel doesn’t plan to improve the throughput at the price of sacrificing unbeatable latency at low queue depths.
Capacity
Intel announced three capacities for Optane Memory M15 officially: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB (they are also offered by M10). It is said that a 128GB capacity will be added to M15, but this has not been confirmed till now.
The hardware of Optane M10 is the same as Optane SSD 800P; the Optane Memory M10 will share the same hardware platform with the Optane SSD 815P (which is coming soon). The 58GB and 118GB will become available capacities.
Speed
The speed of new M15 has been boosted compared to the previous versions of Intel SSD like M10.
- Sequential Read: the sequential read speed of M15 can reach up to 2000 MB/s. In contrast, that of the previous M10 is only up to 1450 MB/s.
- Sequential Write: the sequential write speed of the new M15 is up to 900 MB/s, while that o the M10 is only up to 640 MB/s.
- Random Read: the random read speed of M15 can be up to 450k IOPS, while that of the older M10 is only up to 250k IOPS.
- Random Write: the random write speed of M15 is up to 220k IOPS, while that of M10 is up to 140k IOPS.
- Read Latency: the read latency of M15 and that of M10 are both 6.75 µs.
- Write Latency: the write latency of M15 and that of M10 are respectively 12 µs and 18 µs.
Intel Optane Memory H10 Helps You Access More Quickly.
Width & Power
Though the width of the PCIe interface has been doubled, it does no good to the of the performance metrics that Intel will specify for the M15. Yet, it can’t be denied that the random read throughput of Intel Optane Memory M15 does increase by 80% when compared to the previous model.
As for the maximum power, it has been increased from 3.5 W to 5.5 W. However, the idle power has been decreased by 50%.
Verdict
Newer platform like Kaby Lake is required for the Optane Memory M15 (which has broader compatibility than M10) so as to give support to the two drives on one card design. The driver requirement of M15 has been updated: the older requirement is Intel RST version 15.7 or newer while the new requirement is RST version 17 or newer. But, this only applies to the situation where you use the Optane Memory caching software for Windows.
All in all, the Intel Optane Memory M15 is a standard M.2 NVMe SSD which is smaller and faster than the flash-based NVMe SSDs.