ASRock web pages point towards future Optane 905P M.2 NVMe SSDs

So far, Intel’s high-end Optane 900P SSDs have never released in the M.2 form factor, with the company’s largest Optane-powered M.2 card being the 800P at the time of writing, offering users a maximum capacity of 118GB. The reasoning behind the 900P’s lack of an M.2 variant is simple; the SSD is too large to fit on an M.2 card, with Intel’s controller chip being too big to fit onto a standard 22mm wide M.2 card. 

On some of ASRock’s latest motherboard webpages, the company has listed their M.2 slots as being “Intel Optane SSD 905P Ready”, with their promotional images showcasing a 22110 M.2 slot (110mm long 22mm wide). These images seem to indicate that Intel plans to release an M.2 Optane 905P series SSD in the near future, bringing high-end Optane performance to the form factor for the first time. 

According to sources over at Tom’s Hardware, Intel’s new 905P SSD controller will support the same seven channels as its predecessor, allowing seven packages with four 3D XPoint/Optane dies to be attached to the controller. This configuration can create an M.2 card with 448GB of total storage space, though only 375GB will be available to the user after overprovisioning is taken into account.