Why does the Acer Aspire a315-53-564x laptop have a 16GB M2 SSD?

Question

Iron

My son's Acer Aspire a315-53-564x laptop broke down - the hinges jammed and, apparently, the matrix cable was interrupted when closing, the screen does not work, only an external monitor.
Since the laptop has been very slow lately, I decided to clean it at the same time. Dismantled, inspected, blew, removed and loosened the hinges, waiting for a new train to be brought.
When disassembling, I found a 16GB SSD M2 installed on the motherboard. It was not specified in the configuration, there was a simple 1 TB hard drive with Win7, which I also wanted to change to SSD and Linux.
Tell me, what is the 16GB M2 SSD used for in this model?

Answer 1

Google "Intel Optane". This is it.

Answer 2

Most likely it is Intel Optane. If you configure this little thing, then the OS will boot faster.