Check out the sequential 128k read at queue depth 16: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16505/sr-s-sn850-1000.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16505/sr-s-s

Check out the sequential 128k read at queue depth 16: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16505/sr-s-sn850-1000.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16505/sr-s-sn850-1000.png That's >2x higher throughput than an Optane at equivalent queue depth and (as far as I can see in the UK) at less than a tenth of the price: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-wd-black-sn850-m2-2280-pcie-40-x4-nvme-ssd-3d-nand-7000mb-s-read-5100mb-s-write https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-wd-black-sn850-m2-2280-p... vs https://www.scan.co.uk/products/15tb-intel-optane-dc-p4800x-25-aic-ssd-hhhl-pcie-30-x4-nvme-2500mb-s-read-2200mb-s-write-550k-550k-i https://www.scan.co.uk/products/15tb-intel-optane-dc-p4800x-... And that's 7 GB/s from _one_ SSD. Aggregate memory bandwidth on something like the Zen3 is roughly 40 GB/s. These are also first generation PCIe 4, plenty more to come. Doesn't require a huge improvement before you end up in a position where you simply don't have the memory bandwidth or cycles to deal with more than one drive. I suspect the Optane wins most of the benchmarks because of it's outrageously good low queue depth random read performance - that's very effective for software that's not written for modern NVMe SSDs which benefit from very high queue depths. Check out the 4k random read performance from the SN850 at high queue depths: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16505/rr-s-sn850-1000.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16505/rr-s-sn850-1000.png If you can keep the queues deep, it manages to beat the throughput of the Optane. You've got to design algorithms and data structures to exploit that kind of concurrency though.