5 ms·

I'm surprised that intel requires specific CPU support for their optane solutions. Can anybody explain rationale behind this? Why every other SSD implementation

• wtallis 8y ago
  > I'm surprised that intel requires specific CPU support for their optane solutions. The only Optane-related thing that requires a particular CPU platform is their Optane Memory caching software for Windows. That's the very bottom of the Optane product stack, while the 905P is the top. Intel's Optane Memory caching for Windows is built on top of their consumer platform's NVMe software RAID functionality. Intel's consumer chipsets have a mode where they hide any NVMe devices connected through the chipset, making them no longer appear in regular PCIe device enumeration. Instead, the drives can be accessed through non-standard interfaces on the chipset's SATA controller. This remapping ensures that only Intel's software RAID drivers can bind to the drives, which makes things a bit simpler for Intel. This NVMe remapping feature was first added to Intel's Skylake generation chipsets, and Optane Memory was introduced with the next generation (Kaby Lake). Skylake systems didn't get the firmware updates necessary to add Optane Memory caching support (for booting off a cached volume) even though they had all the hardware capabilities and their firmware already had NVMe RAID boot support. All Optane products released so far are standard NVMe SSDs and can be treated as such. If you want to use SSD caching software or software RAID from somebody other than Intel, it won't care whether or not your drive is an Optane product.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]