Intel announces new Optane drives: Optane P5800X targeted at datacenters and Optane H20 for Tiger Lake laptops

Intel claims that the Optane P5800X is the world's fastest datacenter SSD with 3x the random 4K mixed read/write IOPS and 3x higher sequential 4K-128K read/write bandwidth compared to the Optane SSD DC P4800X. The Optane P5800X uses second generation 3D XPoint memory and brings support for PCIe Gen4 in capacities ranging from 400 GB to 3.2 TB.

The Optane P5800X offers a 67% higher drive writes per day (DWPD) endurance up to 100 DWPD. It makes good use of the PCIe Gen4 bandwidth by offering up to 7.2 GB/s sequential reads and 6.2 GB/s sequential writes. The P5800X delivers an impressive 1.8 million IOPS on a random 4K 70/30 read/write ratio. Single-sector 512B random reads (RR) IOPS have also been optimized to achieve 4.6 million IOPS.

Last year, Intel launched the Optane H10, which brought 3D Xpoint and QLC NAND on a single package. This year, with Optane H20, Intel is offering higher speeds and lower latencies along with purportedly lower power consumption. Unlike the Optane H10, Optane H20 will be offered only in two capacities — 32 GB Optane + 512 GB storage and 32 GB Optane + 1 TB storage. The storage part is handled by a new QLC 3D NAND.

The H20 still uses PCIe Gen3 NVMe connectivity and requires a 11th generation U series Tiger Lake processor along with an Intel 500 series chipset and Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Driver 18.1. This means Optane H20 will be restricted to OEM Tiger Lake laptops (from Q2 2021) and is unlikely to be available off-the-shelf for other platforms.