Enterprise and fans of high-end drives will be pleased to know that Intel is releasing its ultra-fast Optane line of SSDs. Intel announced that its Optane SSDs would be released alongside the upcoming Kaby Lake CPUs in either the last quarter of the year or early in 2017.

The Optane line of SSD has been getting a lot of attention in the tech community. This will be the first line of SSDs to take advantage of Intel's XPoint technology, a new storage technology that promises performance close to RAM transfer speeds while at the same time maintaining the benefits of NAND like its non-volatile feature.

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Intel has demonstrated the performance of its XPoint technology in the past. In one event, Intel showed a performance output rating which is five times faster than the current top of the line SSDs. With XPoint technology, the Optane SSDs can deliver significant improvements in random performance due to its new and more effective memory structure.

Intel is planning to release three Optane SSDs. The first one is branded as Stony Beach and can act as a high-performance cache for other types of storage. The other two are Brighton Beach and Mansion Beach respectively. Both of them are enthusiast-grade solid state NVMe drives which can operate using the PCIe 3.0 x2 and x4 buses.

Judging by their specs, the new Optane SSDs are slated to be high-end products. Tech analysts are expecting the Optane line of SSDs to replace Intel's SSD 750 Series, which is known for its high-end performance.

Intel and Micron unveiled the Optane memory last year and gave it the codename 3D XPoint. The two companies labeled the 3D XPoint RAMs as "the first new class of memory since 1989." Intel and Micro also claimed that the new type of memory is up to 1,000 times faster than the regular NAND flash.

TagsIntel, Intel SSD, SSD, Optane, Optane SSD, Intel Kaby Lake, Xpoint