Disclosed herein are techniques for monitoring the performance of a storage-class memory (SCM). In some embodiments, a performance monitoring circuit at an interface between the SCM and a memory controller of the SCM receives transaction commands from the memory controller to the SCM, measures statistics associated with the transaction commands, and determines a utilization rate of the SCM based on the statistics. Based on the determined utilization rate of the SCM, future transaction requests can be optimized to improve the utilization rate of the SCM.