Although Intel has already showed a lot of details for its 3D Xpoint memory technology, co-developed with Micron, as well as announced its Optane SSD based on that same 3D Xpoint memory technology, this is the first time that we see some real-life performance numbers. Intel has previously showcased its Optane SSDs and we do know that it will be coming in a couple of different form-factors, including PCIe M.2, U.2, PCIe add-on card as well as in the DDR4 DIMM form-factor.

According to a report from PC Perspective, Intel's Rob Crooke, VP for Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG) and Ian Yang, President of Intel China, showcased an Optane SSD system based on PCIe x4 NVMe form-factor which was compared to a standard NAND-based SSDs connected via Thunderbolt 3 port. While this is not really a best and fair comparison, it at least showed us the real-life performance of Optane NVMe PCIe x4 SSD, which peaks at around 1.94GB/s, while transfering a movie file. 

As you remember, Intel has previously showed the 4K random performance of the 3D XPoint Optane SSD, peaking at 464,300 IOPS, which was quite impressive.

Hopefully, we will see more demos of Intel Optane SSD technology in future but we are still far away from the official release as first drives are expected sometime in Q2 2017.