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Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

intel.com

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Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#31

Post by timothycrosley »

temuze wrote: post #12
freeone3000 wrote: post #5

It looks to be an accelerator cache for HDDs, but slower than an SSD, with fairly low capacity. And it requires a 7th gen intel processor, so this isn't a performance boost for older PCs either. Exactly who is this aimed at?

Looks faster than an SSD to me. From the FAQ: "Q4: Will Intel Optane memory also accelerate an SSD? If so how much? A: Yes. Intel Optane memory can be used to accelerate any type of SATA-based storage media, including SATA SSDs, However, the performance benefit of adding Intel Optane memory will be greater on slower storage devices like an HDD versus a relatively faster storage device like a SATA-SSD. Additional perf…

It's faster than SATA SSD but slower than most NVMe M.2 SSDs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11227/intel-launches-optane-me.... Because of when this was launched, and the fact it only works with newer processors that also support NVMe, by the time it is at all common place, so would M.2 SSDs, making it a weird concept. It's essentially the most expensive per GB NVMe drive, with worse performance, and some software to automate caching.

Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#32

Post by ascheidecker »

2bluesc wrote: post #20
2bluesc wrote: post #16

Anandtech, as usual, has a good article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11227/intel-launches-optane-me... > The Optane Memory products are squeezing into a relatively small niche for limited budgets that require a lot of storage and want the benefit of solid state performance without paying the full price of a boot SSD. Intel notes that Optane Memory caching can be used in front of hybrid drives and SATA SSDs, but the…

Interesting comment from Anandtech [0] > Keep in mind that consumer NVMe SSDs that boast throughput of 2GB/s or more generally do not reach their peak at low queue depth. Optane is supposed to be able to drive 1200MB/s read throughput at low queue depth (not sure why they listed QD4), so there is potential for some performance improvement here. Most consumer workloads never get out of low queue depth territory, so th…

Another factor is that these consumer Optane products only have 1 or 2 chips to multiplex operations across. Their enterprise product, the SSD DC P4800X uses 28 of the same 16GB chips and can read or write at ~2GB/s which is competitive with NVMe SSDs.

Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#33

Post by slizard »

2bluesc wrote: post #16

Anandtech, as usual, has a good article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11227/intel-launches-optane-me... > The Optane Memory products are squeezing into a relatively small niche for limited budgets that require a lot of storage and want the benefit of solid state performance without paying the full price of a boot SSD. Intel notes that Optane Memory caching can be used in front of hybrid drives and SATA SSDs, but the…

Partly it is just marketing fluff, Intel trying to save their face and hoping that most will not remember the promises of revolutionary product while what they released is barely evolutionary.

Can't find a better article right now than this SEmiaccurate rant [1] which is quite inflammatory, but does not push falsehoods AFAICT. But Intel has essentially walked back from the 100-1000x improvements it initially claimed to something that's barely better than NVMe in terms of performance and robustness seems far from initial claims too.

[1] https://semiaccurate.com/2017/03/10/intel-mislead-press-xpoi...

Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#35

Post by ak217 »

If I'm reading this right, this device is slower than a Samsung 960 Evo across the board (http://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-...). It seems that when Intel started developing Optane, they didn't anticipate how much faster NVMe PCIe SSDs would become. Couple that with significant clock frequency headroom for DDR4, and this product really doesn't look competitive.

Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#37

Post by Drdrdrq »

2bluesc wrote: post #16

Anandtech, as usual, has a good article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11227/intel-launches-optane-me... > The Optane Memory products are squeezing into a relatively small niche for limited budgets that require a lot of storage and want the benefit of solid state performance without paying the full price of a boot SSD. Intel notes that Optane Memory caching can be used in front of hybrid drives and SATA SSDs, but the…

Could this be useful for some cloud storage? Using cheaper hdds while keeping low latency of the ssd?

Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#38

Post by ars »

ak217 wrote: post #35

If I'm reading this right, this device is slower than a Samsung 960 Evo across the board ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-... ). It seems that when Intel started developing Optane, they didn't anticipate how much faster NVMe PCIe SSDs would become. Couple that with significant clock frequency headroom for DDR4, and this product really doesn't look competitive.

> If I'm reading this right, this device is slower than a Samsung 960 Evo across the board

Be sure and check queue depth when comparing. Apparently their claim to fame is full speed even at low queue depth.

Re: Optane Memory – A bridge between DRAM and storage

#40

Post by valarauca1 »

solotronics wrote: post #36

my understanding was one goal of this would be replacing DRAM with 3D XPOINT so theoretically your computer would have 1 TB of this new memory in its RAM slots.

Your understanding if a bit flawed, and largely based on marketting.

Intel has hinted XPOINT will be usable in DRAM slots, but has yet to announce a product.

Intel has stated XPOINT will replace DRAM buuut based on it's marketing material it won't. Having latencies go from 14nano-seconds to 9000nano-seconds isn't acceptable for a DRAM replacement.

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