Can anyone explain the purpose of a 32 gig NVMe SSD? I think it's quite an apple thing to install such a stupidly tiny drive into a computer, but on the other hand it doesn't seem right. This can't be a system drive can it? But what else could it be? This is like an impractical, high-speed USB drive that requires disassembly of the computer to remove...
As someone who has performed data recovery on optane systems. No, just no.
There's larger slow mechanical storage.
Faster flash and xpoint storage
RAM.
Any device can use a level up to cache and appear faster.
But RAM caching is generally better handled by the OS itself.
Flash coaching isn't an awful idea except when it goes wrong your back to "safety remove disk" being absolutely vital. So the OS needs to be aware and cutting power at the wrong time can kill your install.
Every update says "so not turn off your computer" for a reason but the actual redundancy we now have is leagues better than 10 years ago
God forbid one component in an optane chain becomes unreliable.
Ultimately everything needs to run in RAM. Everything needs persistent storage. A non-standard middle step between persistent and volatile memory is best avoided.
Xpoint was an interesting experiment but CXL replaced it. Ultimately the choice for data centres is to support more RAM. The additional RAM replacing the optane cache while the waits to be written is more compatible and predictable.
You can now have terrabytes of RAM and if you rarely boot and have redundant systems. There's need for the middle step.
The cost of memory and SSD per gigabyte as a cache matters. But RAM error correction and other protocols give even more advantages to avoiding optane.