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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 perfo
by freeone3000 10y ago
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?
- jpalomaki 10y agoAt least Lenovo was supposed to offer these as option for some of their laptops. Maybe this makes sense if you need lots of space. Over 1TB SSDs are expensive.
- dguaraglia 10y agoData centers willing to provide dense storage instances?
- temuze 10y agoLooks 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 performance data is forthcoming" http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/optane-memory-faq.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tech...
- codebook 10y agoI don't think GP is talking about SATA SSD. Based on the performance, definitely it is PCIe NVMe SSD ( 960 IMO )
- timothycrosley 10y agoIt's faster than SATA SSD but slower than most NVMe M.2 SSDs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11227/intel-launches-optane-memory-m2-cache-ssds-for-client-market 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.
- fgonzag 10y agoExcept for the fact that it hits max throughput at way lower queue depths, is bit addressable, and it destroys mixed workloads since you can read while writing. I don't think it'll be revolutionary, but it will be quite nice for caching, databases, or even as a write cache using something like ZFS's zil, then flushing to NVMe SSDs
- jandrese 10y agoI don't know, that sounds like a pretty small niche at the end of the day. If it describes you workload I would jump on it ASAP because a year from now it will probably be discontinued.
- sitkack 10y agoIt sounds like the cache layer to an SSD and should be internal, not a separate device.
- wtallis 10y agoJust FYI, there's no such thing as "processors that also support NVMe". Intel's Windows-only caching software for the Optane Memory product will refuse to work on any but the newest Intel platforms, but any other caching software will work fine on any platform that supports PCIe. If it turns out that small Optane caches are worth what Intel's charging for the hardware, then the existing third-party caching solutions will get tuned to make full use of Optane.
- 1001101 10y agoMy interpretation is that it is a fancy cache using a new type of memory, XPoint, a non-volatile phase change memory, with greater endurance (and cost) than NAND sitting on the M.2 bus, combined with OS drivers to assist with the mapping. The idea is M.2 speed > SATA, but the dynamic M.2 caching isn't native to the OS, so drivers are required to intermediate. Pretty underwhelming relative to the hype.
- dv_dt 10y agoM.2 is a hardware connector. It can carry various flavors of SATA or NVMe over PCIe lanes. Generally M.2 drives will be at least equal to a SATA drive on a traditional SATA connector, with the potential to be much faster. However, even some of the m.2/NVMe drives which are much faster at the bus level seem to be bottlenecked by some design assumptions (both inside the drive and above in the various OS layers). I think in the medium to longer term M.2/NVMe will be much faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
- sliken 10y agoJust buy a nicer M2 and you get plenty of performance without special drivers: # dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null bs=131072 1953586+1 records in 1953586+1 records out 256060514304 bytes (256 GB, 238 GiB) copied, 159.18 s, 1.6 GB/s
- dv_dt 10y agoIf you don't test read with some writing, you might be misled by performance of an SSD. 100% read or 100% write are very different from 50/50 or even 70/30 r/w. The mixed bandwidth typically drops by a lot. If you haven't pre-written some data, that dd test might not even be touching the flash. Just reading internal metadata... But yes, nicer M.2s will perform better!
- valarauca1 10y agoNobody. You lose SSD transfer speed, while gain _some_ hardware response latency. NVMe response latency (on hardware side, not OS) is around 14-15micro-seconds on reads, and tops out at 200micro-seconds on writes [1]. Which is nearly 2-3 orders of magnitude below spinning rust. While Optane can halve this to 7micro-seconds on reads. The price/pref vs established NVMe tech is non-existent. When I can spend $X/GB to get a 2000% performance bump, its hard to justify spending $X*4/GB to get 2050% performance bump. Most applications/data centers have yet to transfer to NVMe. Offering marginal gains a sizable markup is a risky strategy. Furthermore Optane is nearly 2 orders of magnitude lower than RAM in latency, and 5 orders of magnitude lower transfer. So the idea of "non-volatile RAM" has yet to arrive. --- Also "Transparent to the OS" should strike fear in your heart. The OS's job is to manage hardware, memory, and caches. Why drop this? [1] https://www.cs.utah.edu/~manua/pubs/systor15.pdf https://www.cs.utah.edu/~manua/pubs/systor15.pdf
- convolvatron 10y agoseems like it might be useful as a transaction log?
- angry_octet 10y agoThe latency of a regular SATA SSD is more than good enough if you want a log of writes to spinning rust. The increased write endurance might be appealing for something like a ZFS intents log (ZIL). Too small to provide much of an cache, when you can have 256GB of SSD for the same price. It is a pity that the marketing docs don't address how this impacts on write consistency. Instant write sync is the primary advantage of hardware RAID, but still, how much better is this than a normal SSD?
- Dylan16807 10y ago> The increased write endurance might be appealing for something like a ZFS intents log (ZIL). These first generation products don't actually have better endurance, though.
- 10y ago
- bbulkow 10y ago1. It is faster than an SSD - at low queue depths, or if you are writing a lot - in its Optane NVMe form factor. 2. In the NVMe form factor, it supports older CPUs. 3. In the DIMM form factor, it will be far, far faster than NVMe, but intel isn't saying when those are coming.
- hl5 10y agoI think it could extend battery time for large format tablets and car computers.