Intel’s Optane is next-gen storage

BY Christ ian hall & Mat Macs could be set for a major storage-speed boost as early as next year, after reports emerged that Intel’s new Optane solid-state drives could be included in MacBook models or the Mac Pro in 2017.

Optane drives contain Intel’s new 3D XPoint (pronounced “crosspoint”) tech, which allows data to be read and written in small sizes far more quickly than on current SSDs, thanks to the “stackable” architecture of the drive – featuring new technology that doesn’t rely on transistors at all. In practice, that could mean dramatically improved speed over current NAND flash storage, and a 1,000-times increase in durability. Interest ingly, opta ne is so fast that it can even be used in place of RAM in computers. It’s slower than the DRAM tech used currently for memory, but is much, much more dense, so can store more data in the same physical area – Intel has shown Optane sticks that offer 512GB per stick, which is a huge increase over the current 64GB. That means up to 6TB of RAM in a single server board, which could eliminate the need for other kinds of storage – an advantage in particular for quickly feeding data to complex, multi-core processors. This might make it ideal for a future version of the high-end, 12-core Mac Pro. Bolton

Even for storage on everyday computers, there should be a notable boost. Optane is reported to be making its way to Apple’s MacBook range first, before coming to PCs at a later date. Apple has often been an early and enthusiastic adopter of advanced technology in its machines, such as Thunderbolt and its switch to PCIe‑based flash storage in recent years, and Optane is another innovation that will keep MacBooks at the head of the portable computing pack.

It was also recently announced, at the Open Compute Project’s summit in San Jose, California, that Optane is compatible with the NVMe protocol used in the latest Retina MacBook storage – so that’s one less obstacle in the way of Optane-equipped MacBooks.