Optane's Final Voyage: Intel Quietly Launches P5810X SSDs

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Everything comes to an end eventually.

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel has quietly begun shipping its Optane SSD DC P5810X drives, which could be its last storage device based on the 3D XPoint memory. The new SSDs offer extremely high performance and ultimate durability at 100 drive writes per day (DWPD). Still, they are hardly different from the original Optane SSD DC P5800X-series products. So, what would you expect from the deceased Optane division?

Intel's Optane SSD DC P5810X series currently includes 400GB and 800GB models that come in a 2.5-inch U.2 form factor with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. The drives sport performance figures up to 7200 MBps sequential read speed as well as up to 5400 MBps (800GB SKU) or 6000 MBps (400GB SKU) sequential write speed (such speeds make these drives one of the best SSDs today). As for random read/write performance, the drives are capable of up to 1.5M/1.38M IOPS at a five µs read/write latency.

The main selling point of these drives is, of course, their endurance rating of 100 DWPD, something that conventional 3D NAND-based products cannot offer, which is why Kioxia has XL-NAND and Samsung has Z-NAND (and which still cannot match the endurance of Intel's Optane DC).

Intel's Optane SSD DC P5810X line belongs to the codenamed Alder Stream family of drives, which already includes P5800X-series products, so it is logical to expect the new products to use similar controllers and 3D XPoint memory media. Meanwhile, the new P5810X drives have a considerably higher active power rating than their P5810X brethren, which on the one hand, means that they can sustain high temperatures for prolonged periods (yet they are not going higher than 70°C), but on the other hand indicates their lower their economic efficiency.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware/Intel)

We do not know how exactly Intel plans to position the new P5810X SSDs against existing P5800X drives. Intel has barely ever publicly talked about its Optane SSD DC P5810X drives. We only know about them because these devices (along with their Optane SSD DC P5811X counterparts in ruler form factor) passed NVMe interoperability tests early this year at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (the main validator of NVMe-compliant SSDs and controllers).

Perhaps the most important thing about the Optane SSD DC P5810X and Optane SSD DC P5811X is that these are probably the last 3D XPoint drives ever launched by Intel, as the company officially killed its Optane business earlier this year. We have no idea how long Intel plans to ship its 3D XPoint-based products, though we are sure that the company does not intend to produce 3D XPoint devices with a PCIe Gen5 interface.

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • helper800
    Ill buy a 2 drives and leave one in the box as an investment. May be worth something to a collector some day.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Meanwhile, the new P5810X drives have a considerably higher active power rating than their P5810X brethren
    I'm guessing the second one should be "P5800X".

    I stumbled across these, a month ago, while looking up the P5800X on ark.intel.com.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    helper800 said:
    Ill buy a 2 drives and leave one in the box as an investment. May be worth something to a collector some day.

    If you can even find them! Newegg has the P5800X in U.2 format listed for a lot higher than it should be, based upon prev gen pricing. I'm not even sure where you would get the P5810X, unless you have a business connection with some distributors like Ingram Micro, etc.

    I would be drooling over a drive that matches the best PCIe 4.0 x4 drives in r/w, but beat all of them in latency & sheer responsiveness. The higher price, of course, is why Intel decided it wasn't going to continue. But I guess if you have to have it, especially for a replacement/expansion of a server currently with Optane drives as primary storage, you'll pay the price. 'Cause if you only use Optane, you probably have a specific performance reason for it, and the pricing of the drives is only a bump in the road.
    Reply
  • Mpablo87
    Intel Quietly ? ?
    Good Intel !
    Reply
  • bit_user
    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    If you can even find them! Newegg has the P5800X in U.2 format listed for a lot higher than it should be, based upon prev gen pricing.
    For a while, you could buy the 400 GB model directly from Newegg for $1057. That's the best online price I saw for it, except when you factor in their markdown they had during the Oct 12-13 SSD sale (but it was sold out, by the time I even noticed). I no longer see them listing the 400 GB model as "sold by Newegg". So, I guess they're not expecting any more to come back in stock?

    As for U.2 vs PCIe half-height/half-length, I have only ever seen the P5800X in U.2 form factor. And I definitely looked around. I don't mind, because my drive bays are directly behind a big 140 mm intake fan, whereas the PCIe cards are passively cooled and wouldn't get as much airflow. The only annoying part is having to buy a ~$35 adapter + cable to connect it to a M.2 slot.

    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    I'm not even sure where you would get the P5810X, unless you have a business connection with some distributors like Ingram Micro, etc.
    Yeah... the P5800X wasn't exactly a retail product, but at least they were individually packaged. It could be that the P5810X is only available in bulk.

    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    I would be drooling over a drive that matches the best PCIe 4.0 x4 drives in r/w, but beat all of them in latency & sheer responsiveness.
    I'm conflicted about whether to use it, because disk caching and write buffering works really well. So, the advantage over a reasonably fast SSD is probably going to be unnoticeable by me.

    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    The higher price, of course, is why Intel decided it wasn't going to continue.
    I think Intel cancelled it when they noticed battery-backed RAM was both faster and a similar cost per GB. If you add some NAND, the battery just has to be big enough to save the contents on power-loss. Maybe a super-capacitor would even be enough?

    And as good as the new drive's endurance is (100 DWPD!), DRAM is far better.

    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    But I guess if you have to have it, especially for a replacement/expansion of a server currently with Optane drives as primary storage, you'll pay the price. 'Cause if you only use Optane, you probably have a specific performance reason for it, and the pricing of the drives is only a bump in the road.
    It's really for use cases like databases and storing index data for distributed filesystems that Optane comes into its own. Also, super write-heavy use cases that would wear out NAND drives too rapidly.
    Reply
  • polnoch
    I'm owner of INTEL SSDPEK1W120GA. And I can say, it's very sad that they killed optane. Why? Because I use this drive for SWAP for host system and VMs. And it's very first time in my life when I never see out-of-memory things... Optane has latency in about 10 times less than just normal nvme SSD, also it has good durability - exactly what is important for a swap.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    polnoch said:
    it's very sad that they killed optane. Why?
    I know it's kind of buried in a longish post (above), but the best explanation I've heard is:

    "I think Intel cancelled it when they noticed battery-backed RAM was both faster and a similar cost per GB."

    The math is just upside down, for Optane. They couldn't get good scaling in the vertical direction, and I don't know if areal density is even scaling as well as DRAM, much less NAND.

    polnoch said:
    Because I use this drive for SWAP for host system and VMs. And it's very first time in my life when I never see out-of-memory things... Optane has latency in about 10 times less than just normal nvme SSD, also it has good durability - exactly what is important for a swap.
    Ideally, don't over-provision your VMs' memory, and then you shouldn't have so many issues with swapping. But, if you must provision more total RAM than you have on the host, I agree that a fast swap drive is very beneficial.

    However, if the host can accommodate more DRAM, that's an even better option and probably not much more expensive than relying on Optane-backed swap.

    Either way, another thing you might look into is memory-compression. I think there are a couple different implementations, but one is called ZRAM. I have no experience with them.
    Reply