Intel has been working on new kind of technology for memory for a while now. Intel and Micron Technology have been working on this since 2012 and it’s called 3D XPoint and they claim it to be amazingly fast.
3D XPoint is non-volatile in nature (it does not loose data when power is switched off) and is four times denser than a RAM. But it is costly per Gigabyte than NAND flash – technology inside present SSD’s. Yet you get absurdly fast speeds whether it is latency or reading/writing data.
Now Intel is ready with its new technology and it is fitted inside the ‘375GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X’. These SSD’s are PCIe card that are priced at $1,520.
Well company was very secretive about letting reviewers get their hands on this new SSD, so they offered some publications to get a chance to review and test out the stuff at Intel’s own data servers and not on their computers.
Well if you look at those results it seems that 3D XPoint performs faster in every way. Whether it is simple I/O or handling small data, it turns out to be the best out there. For now it is only available for enterprises but maybe soon we will see this device making its way to our desktop PCs.