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> Just bought Intel Optane memory this morning, installed it in my AMD Ryzen DEV machine and it works perfectly without any issue. Interestingly, according to I

> Just bought Intel Optane memory this morning, installed it in my AMD Ryzen DEV machine and it works perfectly without any issue. Interestingly, according to Intel, this is not suppose to happen - you are expected to use both of their latest processor/chipset to run Optane memory! How are you measuring Optane working? AFAIK it's supposed to improve boot times and application load times as it learns after a few times without configuration. Are you observing this improvement or does the Optane just show up as a regular storage drive?

wtallis 9y ago
The Optane Memory hardware is a NVMe SSD. The caching is done in software, and Intel's caching software is locked to their most recent consumer-grade platform (and Windows 10 64-bit, and only caching the boot volume). Using caching is optional; it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB. Or you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to.
- dis-sys 9y ago
  You mean Intel doesn't want to tell the _full_ story? I have to agree with you on that. Official statement from Intel included below - "A system that is Intel® Optane™ memory ready includes: a 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, an Intel® 200 series chipset, M.2 type 2280-S1-B-M connector on a PCH Remapped PCIe* Controller and Lanes in a x2 or x4 configuration with B-M keys that meet NVMe* Spec 1.1 and System BIOS that supports the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) 15.5 driver." http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/optane-memory.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tech... Did they mention things like "it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB" or "you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to"
  - floatboth 9y ago
    They use "Intel® Optane™" to refer to the whole "solution" including their awful Windows-specific hardware-supported caching hack (Rapid Storage Whatever), because that's how they're going to sell it to consumers. Of course the drives are normal NVMe and you can use them as L2ARC+ZIL in ZFS :D
    - dis-sys 9y ago
      I won't call it a normal nvme. Companies don't make/sell nvme SSD with such awful sequential R/W performance. On the other hand, its random write performance at low QD is not matched by any competitor. It is $45 unit price is another interesting factor for me - I only need 16GBytes but I need 16GBytes each on many machines. I am not really aware of any other tier-1 brand nvme SSDs that are available in such size/price. ;)
- valarauca1 9y ago
  Just FYI Optane is a full NVMe drive but when UEFI/Bios attempts to boot from it, the drive purposely sends a hard error code. I've yet to see one person use it as a boot drive. Plenty mounting it as a "not quiet RAM disk".
  - wtallis 9y ago
    I've booted Windows 10 from it on an ASRock E3V5 Gaming/OC motherboard, and haven't found anything in its behavior that seems to be non-standard (except that my first one died, but that doesn't seem to have been related to my test of it as a boot drive). Intel hasn't mentioned it being unusual that I was able to boot from it. What kind of system configurations have you found to cause problems? I wouldn't be surprised to see the NVMe remapping feature of Intel's chipsets get in the way, but that can be disabled on virtually all systems that have the feature.
dis-sys 9y ago
I am using Optane Memory as a 16GBytes SSD with very good write latency. In more details, I am using it with my Raft[1] library implemented in Golang. Raft log entries are saved into RocksDB with fsync enabled, it is basically a I/O latency sensitive program and arguably one of the best use cases for Optane. The write performance boost observed here is just insane. With the WAL configured to be stored on that 16GBytes Optane device and the actual table files stored on much cheaper/slower regular SSD, 16GBytes is more than enough for my use case. Best $49 toy ever bought. [1] https://raft.github.io/ https://raft.github.io/
- maksimum 9y ago
  Thanks for the link, seems like interesting material. From what I gathered in the link in order to perform recovery you need a non-volatile and accurate history of a server's execution state? Using a RAMdisk to store the state and asynchronously writing it to SSD would not be fault tolerant enough in general?

wtallis 9y ago

The Optane Memory hardware is a NVMe SSD. The caching is done in software, and Intel's caching software is locked to their most recent consumer-grade platform (and Windows 10 64-bit, and only caching the boot volume). Using caching is optional; it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB. Or you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to.

dis-sys 9y ago
You mean Intel doesn't want to tell the _full_ story? I have to agree with you on that. Official statement from Intel included below - "A system that is Intel® Optane™ memory ready includes: a 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, an Intel® 200 series chipset, M.2 type 2280-S1-B-M connector on a PCH Remapped PCIe* Controller and Lanes in a x2 or x4 configuration with B-M keys that meet NVMe* Spec 1.1 and System BIOS that supports the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) 15.5 driver." http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/optane-memory.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tech... Did they mention things like "it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB" or "you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to"
- floatboth 9y ago
  They use "Intel® Optane™" to refer to the whole "solution" including their awful Windows-specific hardware-supported caching hack (Rapid Storage Whatever), because that's how they're going to sell it to consumers. Of course the drives are normal NVMe and you can use them as L2ARC+ZIL in ZFS :D
  - dis-sys 9y ago
    I won't call it a normal nvme. Companies don't make/sell nvme SSD with such awful sequential R/W performance. On the other hand, its random write performance at low QD is not matched by any competitor. It is $45 unit price is another interesting factor for me - I only need 16GBytes but I need 16GBytes each on many machines. I am not really aware of any other tier-1 brand nvme SSDs that are available in such size/price. ;)
valarauca1 9y ago
Just FYI Optane is a full NVMe drive but when UEFI/Bios attempts to boot from it, the drive purposely sends a hard error code. I've yet to see one person use it as a boot drive. Plenty mounting it as a "not quiet RAM disk".
- wtallis 9y ago
  I've booted Windows 10 from it on an ASRock E3V5 Gaming/OC motherboard, and haven't found anything in its behavior that seems to be non-standard (except that my first one died, but that doesn't seem to have been related to my test of it as a boot drive). Intel hasn't mentioned it being unusual that I was able to boot from it. What kind of system configurations have you found to cause problems? I wouldn't be surprised to see the NVMe remapping feature of Intel's chipsets get in the way, but that can be disabled on virtually all systems that have the feature.

dis-sys 9y ago

I am using Optane Memory as a 16GBytes SSD with very good write latency. In more details, I am using it with my Raft[1] library implemented in Golang. Raft log entries are saved into RocksDB with fsync enabled, it is basically a I/O latency sensitive program and arguably one of the best use cases for Optane. The write performance boost observed here is just insane. With the WAL configured to be stored on that 16GBytes Optane device and the actual table files stored on much cheaper/slower regular SSD, 16GBytes is more than enough for my use case. Best $49 toy ever bought. [1] https://raft.github.io/ https://raft.github.io/

maksimum 9y ago
Thanks for the link, seems like interesting material. From what I gathered in the link in order to perform recovery you need a non-volatile and accurate history of a server's execution state? Using a RAMdisk to store the state and asynchronously writing it to SSD would not be fault tolerant enough in general?