The Optane Memory hardware is a NVMe SSD. The caching is done in software, and Intel's caching software is locked to their most recent consumer-grade platform (and Windows 10 64-bit, and only caching the boot volume). Using caching is optional; it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB. Or you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to.
You mean Intel doesn't want to tell the _full_ story? I have to agree with you on that. Official statement from Intel included below -
"A system that is Intel® Optane™ memory ready includes: a 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, an Intel® 200 series chipset, M.2 type 2280-S1-B-M connector on a PCH Remapped PCIe* Controller and Lanes in a x2 or x4 configuration with B-M keys that meet NVMe* Spec 1.1 and System BIOS that supports the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) 15.5 driver."
"it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB"
or
"you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to"
They use "Intel® Optane™" to refer to the whole "solution" including their awful Windows-specific hardware-supported caching hack (Rapid Storage Whatever), because that's how they're going to sell it to consumers. Of course the drives are normal NVMe and you can use them as L2ARC+ZIL in ZFS :D
I won't call it a normal nvme. Companies don't make/sell nvme SSD with such awful sequential R/W performance. On the other hand, its random write performance at low QD is not matched by any competitor.
It is $45 unit price is another interesting factor for me - I only need 16GBytes but I need 16GBytes each on many machines. I am not really aware of any other tier-1 brand nvme SSDs that are available in such size/price. ;)
I've booted Windows 10 from it on an ASRock E3V5 Gaming/OC motherboard, and haven't found anything in its behavior that seems to be non-standard (except that my first one died, but that doesn't seem to have been related to my test of it as a boot drive). Intel hasn't mentioned it being unusual that I was able to boot from it.
What kind of system configurations have you found to cause problems? I wouldn't be surprised to see the NVMe remapping feature of Intel's chipsets get in the way, but that can be disabled on virtually all systems that have the feature.
