Intel Launches Optane Memory That Makes Standard Hard Drives Perform Like SSDs (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Intel has officially launched its Optane Memory line of Solid State Drives today, lifting embargo on performance benchmark results as well. Optane Memory is designed to accelerate the storage subsystem on compatible machines, to improve transfer speeds, and reduce latency. It is among the first products to leverage 3D XPoint memory technology that was co-developed by Intel and Micron, offering many of the same properties as NAND flash memory, but with higher endurance and certain performance characteristics that are similar to DRAM. The SSD can be paired to the boot drive in a system, regardless of the capacity or drive type, though Optane Memory will most commonly be linked to slower hard drives. Optane Memory is used as a high-speed repository, as usage patterns on the hard drive are monitored and the most frequently accessed bits of data are copied from the boot drive to the Optane SSD. Since the SSD is used as a cache, it is not presented to the end-user as a separate volume and works transparently in the background. Paired with an inexpensive SATA hard drive, general system performance is more in line with an NVMe SSD. In benchmark testing, Intel Optane Memory delivers a dramatic lift in overall system performance. Boot times, application load time, file searches, and overall system responsiveness are improved significantly. Setting up Intel Optane Memory is also quick and easy with "set it and forget it" type of solution. Optane Memory modules will hit retail this week in 16GB and 32GB capacities, at $44 and $77, respectively.

Comments

Fusion Drives...

[Richard_at_work]

Yup, this is no different to "fusion drives" that have been on the market for years - a small SSD acting as a cache for a large spinning disk.

What is different is that all Kaby Lake Intel chipsets come with support for setting this up in the bios, easily and quickly, so long as you are using an Optane PCIe stick as the cache device.

Once the DIMM packaged versions become available, thats when Optane will really start to take off - slightly slower than DRAM, but not much, but considerably cheaper than DRAM for the same capacity - so you get slightly slower, much much cheaper RAM, meaning large RAM setups (like 1TB plus) are no longer out of many peoples budgets...

Or you could just get an SSHD or use cheaper ways

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't news, it's an advertising for Intel.

There are already many ways to do this without using Intels expensive SSDs.

For instance get an SSHD which basically does the same thing in hardware.

Or use ZFS with the relevant ssd arc cache setup

Or use one of many windows programs that do the same thing

Or use the 10$ SSD/HD cards that are out there that do the same thing

Or use a couple of the linux filesystem modules, that aren't as difficult as ZFS, that do the same thing

Don't see why Intel get a headline for something that's been out for years in many different forms, to suit many different operating environments.

Unimpressive performance.

[Gravis Zero]

Take a look at the ATTO Disk Benchmark graphs and you'll notice that optane comes in at dead last on both read and write performance. Sure, it'll beat Intel's SSD for the first few milliseconds but it gets absolutely destroyed by all the Samsung SSDs. Though, for all we know, the memory controller made the system retarded. Either way, it's not a winner.

The upside of this is that I learned the Samsung SSD 960 Pro M.2 has excellent performance characteristics.

Re:Unimpressive performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the ATTO Disk Benchmark graphs and you'll notice that optane comes in at dead last on both read and write performance. Sure, it'll beat Intel's SSD for the first few milliseconds but it gets absolutely destroyed by all the Samsung SSDs. Though, for all we know, the memory controller made the system retarded. Either way, it's not a winner.

The upside of this is that I learned the Samsung SSD 960 Pro M.2 has excellent performance characteristics.

Even for Slashdot this is a stupid fucking comment.

After reading the link ATTO Disk Benchmark graphs it says

"Before we show you how Intel Optane Memory can accelerate a system, we’ve got some quick numbers recorded with the 32GB Optane Memory SSD operating as a separate standalone drive. This is NOT the Optane Memory SSD’s intended purpose. There are Intel Optane-branded consumer SSDs coming down the pipeline for standalone installations, but we know this is the first thing many of you would ask for, so here goes...
Read more at http://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-optane-memory-with-3d-xpoint-review-and-performance?page=2#49c3kMRAJ3CCv3UA.99"

So the article makes it clear this is not the intended purpose.

And further down the same fucking article
"CrystalDiskMark shows something else that’s very interesting. In the sequential tests, the Intel Optane Memory SSD -- AS EXPECTED -- trails the other high-end M.2 NVMe solid state drives. But these Optane Memory parts excel at small transfers, at low queue depths, which is where the vast majority of consumer workloads reside. In the 4K transfer test, the Optane Memory module absolutely obliterates everything else in the chart.
Read more at http://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-optane-memory-with-3d-xpoint-review-and-performance?page=2#49c3kMRAJ3CCv3UA.99"

Note the phrase "In the 4K transfer test, the Optane Memory module absolutely obliterates everything else in the chart."

So the summary for the simple minded, thats you, is that it doesn't do very well for some things its not supposed to do and does do very well for those things its supposed to do well.

Twat!

Re:Unimpressive performance.

[edxwelch]

I prefer the Ars technica article: https://arstechnica.com/gadget...
Gives a much more critical look at the product. The other reviews seem to be fawning over the new tech too much without doing proper real world comparisons

Not living to the promise

[esperto]

When intel announced 3DXpoint a couple of years ago they said it would be the best thing since sliced bread, cheap as flash, 1000x time more durable, 100x faster, 1000x lower latency. They also promised it in a form factor to replace RAM, kinda like HP "the machine" M-RAM.

But now we see it is not all that, latency is really good but the endurance is barely over flash, so bad that for enterprise product they had to actually use several times the apparent capacity, otherwise it would die really fast due to wear, and for the general consumer the only product they could come up with was an expensive hard drive accelerator, which sincerely, nobody in their right mind should buy, there are already hybrid HD out there with integrated flash that do the same and do not depend on the motherboard chipset/BIOS to operate, and if you are cheap enough to not by a small (and yet much bigger) SSD for your OS for almost the same price, you are not going to buy this.

Hope they some day can live up to the initial hype, but this is not looking to good.

Hyrbid? What's Intel's production problem?

[swb]

32 GB of Optane for $77 is $2.40 per GB, Samsung 850 Pro 1 TB is $0.50 per GB. Intel is nearly 5x more expensive.

Hybrid storage systems are common in the enterprise SAN market, but generally to be useful they need something like 20% of capacity to be flash. At ratios of 1-3% of HDD capacity, I don't see the Intel use case as being especially useful.

I had a Seagate 2.5" years ago that was 32 GB flash plus 512GB and it only felt marginally faster than a standard disk drive. You didn't notice serious performance boosts until you went completely flash.

So does Intel have a yield problem or are they still ramping up production facilities to make these in quantity? It's hard to see a system more convoluted than straight SATA or NVMe flash disk being that big of a deal. I think in order to make this product competitive it has to be offered at $/GB competitive with ordinary flash disks or only a small premium.

Re:please dont post press releases

[bill_mcgonigle]

Given how bad this article's headline is for a tech crowd, if /. didn't get paid to post the story as-is, it really should have. Missed revenue, fellas.

Re:We already had this sales pitch...

[Joce640k]

It seems fairly limited to me. Only Intel CPUs, only Windows 10, special drivers needed.

I was hoping for something with a SATA connector on each end.

Connect one end to the motherboard. Connect the other end to a hard drive. Power on. See a speedup.

*THAT* would have sold millions. This? Not so much.

Re:Hyrbid? What's Intel's production problem?

[esperto]

You seem to be the same AC from my the thread above.

The point everyone is making is that the new technology has to be competitive somehow, either price, performance, capacity, something, but this one is pretty much pointless, it is more expensive, has greater performance but not really impactfull (my spreadsheet now opens in 0.003s with Xpoint instead of 0.005s with flash SSD, yey!?), for now capacity is very limited and endurance is a far cry from the promised during the first announcements, in the order of 30 fold less.

The strong criticism is about a pointless product sold as great with a technology that should be a big leap forward that is not that much better.