Intel is introducing their second generation of Optane Memory products: these are low-capacity M.2 NVMe SSDs with 3D XPoint memory that are intended for use as cache devices to improve performance of systems using hard drives. The new Optane Memory M10 brings a 64GB capacity to the product line that launched a year ago with 16GB and 32GB options.

The complete Optane Memory caching solution consists of an M.2 SSD plus Intel's drivers for caching on Windows, and firmware support on recent motherboards for booting from a cached volume. Intel launched Optane Memory with its Kaby Lake generation of processors and chipsets, and this generation is intended to complement Coffee Lake systems. However, all of the new functionality works just as well on existing Kaby Lake systems as with Coffee Lake.

The major new user-visible feature for this generation of Optane Memory caching is the addition of the ability to cache a secondary data drive, whereas previously only boot drives were possible. Intel refers to this mode as "data drive acceleration", compared to the system acceleration (boot drive) that was the only mode supported by the first generation of Optane Memory. Data drive acceleration has been added solely through changes to the Optane Memory drivers for Windows, and this feature was actually quietly rolled out with version 16 of Intel's RST drivers back in February.

Also earlier this year, Intel launched the Optane SSD 800P family as the low-end alternative to the flagship Optane SSD 900P. The 800P and the new Optane Memory M10 are based on the same hardware and an updated revision of the original Optane Memory M.2 modules. The M10 and the 800P use the same controller and the same firmware. The 800P is usable as a cache device with the Optane Memory software, and the Optane Memory M10 and its predecessor are usable as plain NVMe SSDs without caching software. The 800P and the M10 differ only in branding and intended use; the drive branded as the 58GB 800P is functionally identical to the 64GB M10 and both have the exact same usable capacity of 58,977,157,120 bytes.

Everything said about the 58GB Optane SSD 800P in our review of the 800P family applies equally to the 64GB Optane Memory M10. Intel hasn't actually posted official specs for the M10, so we'll just repeat the 800P specs here:

Intel Optane SSD Specifications
Model Optane SSD 800P Optane Memory
Capacity 118 GB 58 GB
M10 (64 GB)
32 GB 16 GB
Form Factor M.2 2280 B+M key M.2 2280 B+M key
Interface PCIe 3.0 x2 PCIe 3.0 x2
Protocol NVMe 1.1 NVMe 1.1
Controller Intel Intel
Memory 128Gb 20nm Intel 3D XPoint 128Gb 20nm Intel 3D XPoint
Sequential Read 1450 MB/s 1350 MB/s 900 MB/s
Sequential Write 640 MB/s 290 MB/s 145 MB/s
Random Read 250k IOPS 240k IOPS 190k IOPS
Random Write 140k IOPS 65k IOPS 35k IOPS
Read Latency 6.75 µs 7 µs 8 µs
Write Latency 18µs 18µs 30 µs
Active Power 3.75 W 3.5 W 3.5 W
Idle Power 8 mW 8 mW 1 W 1 W
Endurance 365 TB 365 TB 182.5 TB 182.5 TB
Warranty 5 years 5 years
Launch Date March 2018 April 2017
Launch MSRP $199 800P: $129
M10: $144
$77 $44

Rather than cover exactly the same territory as our review of the 800P, this review is specifically focused on use of the Optane Memory M10 as a cache drive in front of a mechanical hard drive. Thanks to the addition of the data drive acceleration functionality, we can use much more of our usual benchmark suite for this than we could with last year's Optane Memory review. The data drive acceleration mode also broadens the potential market for Optane Memory, to include users who want to use a NAND flash-based SSD as their primary storage device but also need a more affordable bulk storage drive. The combination of a 64GB Optane Memory M10 (at MSRP) and a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive is about the same price as a 1TB SATA SSD with 3D TLC NAND, and at higher capacities the combination of a hard drive plus Optane Memory is much cheaper than a SATA SSD.

Intel's Optane Memory system works as an inclusive cache: adding an Optane Memory cache to a system does not increase the usable storage capacity, it just improves performance. Data written to the cache will also be written to the backing device, but applications don't have to wait for the data to land on both devices.

Once enabled, there is no need or option for manual tuning of cache behavior. The operation of the cache system is almost entirely opaque to the user. After an unclean shutdown, there is a bit of diagnostic information visible as the cache state is reconstructed, but this process usually seems to only take a second or two before the OS continues to load.

Test Systems

Intel's Optane Memory caching drivers require a Kaby Lake or newer processor and chipset, but our primary consumer SSD testbed is still a Skylake-based machine. For last year's Optane Memory review, Intel delivered the 32GB module pre-installed in a Kaby Lake desktop. This time around, Intel provided a Coffee Lake system. Both of those systems have been used for tests in this review, and a few benchmarks of drives in a non-caching role have been performed on our usual SSD testbed.

AnandTech 2017/2018 Consumer SSD Testbed
CPU Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5
Motherboard ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
Chipset Intel C232
Memory 4x 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920x1200@60Hz
Software Windows 10 x64, version 1709
Linux kernel version 4.14, fio version 3.1
Test Procedures
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  • Flunk - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link

    For $144 you can get a 256GB M.2 SSD, big enough to use as a boot drive. Even as a cache for a slow hard-drive (which means you also need to buy a hard drive, possibly bumping the cost up to 512GB SSD prices) means this product doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe it made sense when they started development, but it doesn't now.
  • dullard - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link

    Flunk, the reason to get these drives is that an Optane cache + standard hard drive is FASTER and LARGER CAPACITY than the 512 GB SSD. If you don't like larger or faster, then go ahead with just a SSD.
  • bananaforscale - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link

    You totally miss the point. An SSD is cheaper and irrelevantly slower and you can use it for caching.
  • wumpus - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link

    You can? You used to be able to use a 64GB cache on Intel boards, and you can use a 512GB cache on just released AMD (470) boards [unfortunately, that bit of the review still has [words] under the storeMI section].

    If you can pull it off, a 512GB caching SATA drive makes all kinds of sense for anything you might want to do with this. As near as I can tell, Optane's only advantage is that they provide the caching software without having to hit windows and motherboard requirements. Which makes the whole "optane is so fast" advantage a bit of a joke.

    Wake me up when optane has the endurance to be used with a DDR4 interface (presumably with caching HBM2/Intel system DRAM). This doesn't give any advantage (besides providing the software license).
  • shadowx360 - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Windows Storage Spaces or ZFS can do it. Right now I have 2x256GB SSDs mirrored to accelerate a 5x4TB hard drive array. I set 100GB as a write-back cache that automatically flushes to the HDDs, so random write is SSD-level quick. I also pin about 20GB of files to the SSDs permanently and the rest is rotated between free space and system-managed hot files.
  • Lolimaster - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link

    400-500MB/s vs 1.5GB/s, not really much of a difference, either way you will have to wait for that HDD to write to the cache drive 1st at 100MB/s or less (since they're small files, HDD works faster on transfer with larger files).

    If you got a set of constantly used files, move those to the SSD, problem solved.
  • evernessince - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link

    Or you buy an X470 motherboard or pay $10 to get StoreMI, which also makes a cache but is much cheaper and can use any SSD as a cache, which saves you money, allot of it.
  • CheapSushi - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link

    You can use any Optane drive like ANY SSD too.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link

    It's faster in zero real-world situations. It's larger than an SSD bought for the same total money, but not larger than an SSD at the same cost as the optane drive (256GB) + the same HDD you'd use for optane caching. Your point is... flawed.
  • Keljian - Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - link

    This is actually not true. It's faster for Mysql/sqlite in 4k situations when the cache is tuned for it. What uses sqlite? - games, most office software, web browsers..

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