The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource | 
Intel is announcing their latest Optane™ Technology offering in the form of Optane™ Memory, in either 16GB or 32GB modules for Optane™-ready desktop PC motherboards. When Optane™ memory is installed in a 7th Gen Intel Core™ processor-based system, your computing experience will begin with the system booting twice as fast, see up to a 28% improvement in performance and responsiveness, and storage performance up to 14x faster.
Intel’s Optane™ Technology is an innovative combination of 3D XPoint™ memory and Intel’s advanced system memory controller, interface hardware and software IP. The components that make up Intel Optane™ Memory include the Optane™ memory module with 3D XPoint™ memory media, Intel controller and firmware, and Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) version 15.5 or later. Optane™ memory utilizes a PCIe 3.0 x2 interface with NVMe protocol, and is designed in the M.2 2280 form factor. It is currently engineered to be compatible only with Windows 10 64-bit operating system.
As for performance, Optane™ memory’s sequential read speeds are stated as up to 1200MB/s, with sequential write speeds of up to 280MB/s. Random 4K speeds are stated as up to 300,000 IOPS reads and up to 70,000 IOPS writes. Reliability is stated as 1.2 million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). Intel is backing Optane™ memory with a 5-year limited warranty.
Intel Optane ™ Memory will be available to consumers beginning April 24th, 2017 to those also purchasing (or who already have) motherboards or systems that are Optane™-ready. Motherboards that are Optane™-ready are already shipping from ASRock, ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI and others.
Beginning in Q2 of 2017, PC manufacturers including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and others will begin shipping both consumer and commercial systems that feature Intel Optane™ memory. For more information, you can view the Intel Optane™ Memory overview video here.
So instead of adding Optane cache module onto a SSD to make a compelling product we get a used up M.2 slot, need software running to enable it, and a requirement to buy a new CPU. Great plan Intel.
LOL an OPTANE cache is 14x faster than what? an HDD, who still compares with an HDD. Has to be Intel because it is the only way they can get their new OPTANE to look fast enuf. Do an OPTANE PCIe x4 SSD M.2 2280 drive instead and compare to Samsung latest 960 Pro and the lets se how much better it is, much more interesting. Some thing is not right with OPTANE, Intel must have problems some how since they start with OPTANE cache modules.
Hope when you do a review of OPTANE that you dig deep and find out the real pros and cons of OPTANE