Intel Releases Optane Memory H10 Specifications

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Intel's Optane Memory H10 SSD will begin shipping soon in pre-built systems from major OEMs, so Intel's ready to unveil more detailed information about the drive first previewed earlier this year at CES. The Optane Memory H10 is a significant change from the existing Optane Memory family of products, and is a unique 2-in-1 SSD combining 3D XPoint memory and QLC NAND flash memory on a single M.2 module. The H10 is essentially a consolidation of the existing Optane Memory M10 module and the Intel 660p QLC SSD onto a single drive. The Optane portion of the drive is intended to be used as a cache for the QLC portion of the drive, using the Optane Memory caching drivers for Windows that Intel has previously pitched for using with standalone Optane Memory M.2 modules and mechanical hard drives. Until now, Optane products have been difficult to fit into ultrabooks where two M.2 slots may be challenging and a 2.5" hard drive is out of the question.

The Optane Memory H10 will come in three varieties, with QLC NAND capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB. The 256GB model will have 16GB of Optane storage while the 512GB and 1TB will both have 32GB of Optane storage. All three capacities are implemented as single-sided M.2 modules, with approximately half of the card dedicated to the Optane controller, media and PMIC, while the other half contains the Silicon Motion SM2263 controller, DRAM and QLC NAND. The card as a whole has a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, but each of the two SSD controllers gets just two PCIe lanes. Intel's caching software will support reading and writing data from both Optane and QLC simultaneously, so they rate the H10 for up to 2.4GB/s sequential reads even though neither half can exceed 2GB/s on its own.

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