Intel today is launching the Intel Optane SSD 900P Series, the first SSD for desktop PC and workstation users built on Intel Optane technology.
Intel, in collaboration with Roberts Space Industries, announced the new SSD at CitizenCon, a Star Citizen community gathering in Frankfurt, Germany. During the event, Intel demonstrated the universe of Star Citizen on Intel Core i9 processor gaming systems equipped with the Intel Optane SSD 900P Series. The two companies also announced that an exclusive in-game ship, the Sabre Raven, will come with all Intel Optane SSD 900P Series purchases for a limited time.
With the new SSD, Intel's advantage comes from the storage medium: its 3D XPoint memory technology, a new nonvolatile memory that offers much higher performance than flash memory.
The Optane SSD 900P is a premium NVMe PCIe SSD offering the highest level of performance, with a moderate capacity. The Optane SSD 900P is intended for high-end desktop systems and workstations with very disk-heavy workloads. The new SSD isn't for everyone, since its prices that are more than twice what the fastest flash memory based SSDs are selling for.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P is initially launching with 280GB and 480GB capacities. Both sizes will be available as PCIe 3.0 x4 half-height half-length add-in cards, and the 280GB model is also available as a 2.5" U.2 drive. The sequential transfer speeds are nothing special for a NVMe SSD these days. But the random read and write IOPS are far higher than any consumer SSD has offered before. The Intel Optane SSD 900P based on 3D XPoint memory enables it to break almost all the performance records mainly in the low queue depth random reads and writes, but you'll have to pay more than twice the price per GB compared to other high-end SSDs.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P will come to market at $389 (280GB) and $599 (480GB). This means the 900P is roughly three times the cost-per-GB of NAND SSDs.
The new SSD comes with a limited five-year warranty that's restricted by the endurance rating. The endurance rating supports 10 drive writes per day for both capacities. That works out to a massive 8,760 terabytes of warrantied writes for the 480GB model.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P Series is available starting Oct. 27.
