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Surprised that there was not even a single mention of Micron! My understanding is that it was a joint venture of some variety between Intel and Micron. I'm sad

Surprised that there was not even a single mention of Micron! My understanding is that it was a joint venture of some variety between Intel and Micron. I'm sad to see Optane being discontinued. I had very good performance results with it being incorporated into SDS cluster architectures.

anonymousDan 4y ago
Interesting - do you mean Optane PMem (i.e. where it is connected as a DIMM)? Or the Optane SSDs?
- tpetry 4y ago
  Optane SSDs had been great! They have the fastest write latency which made them e.g. perfect for databases or the ZFS ZIL which is a write of any new block to a special space (on that optane ssd) that will later be rewritten to the slower ssd.
PAPPPmAc 4y ago
IIRC Intel bought Micron out of the 3DXpoint/Optane project in 2018, and (based a some hallway conversations at conferences) folks at Micron were not exactly enthusiastic about the early results from the technology or Intel's overhyping marketing years before then.
fluoridation 4y ago
It had good performance, but part of the problem is that Intel way oversold it at the beginning. They said they would be "1000x faster, 1000x more enduring, and 10x more dense than NAND". In the end none of these promises materialized. They released these puny little drives that had a bit better latency than NVMe SSDs, that were locked to Intel systems, that OSs didn't know what to do with them, and that didn't quite fit anywhere in the memory hierarchy. Yeah, it found a few niche uses, but it was never going to be sustainable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anonymousDan 4y ago
  I wonder if standardisation efforts around things like UCIe and CXL will solve the locked to Intel problem, potentially enabling a sustainable market for such devices in future?
- wtallis 4y ago
  > "1000x faster, 1000x more enduring, and 10x more dense than NAND" Their claims were actually a mix of comparisons against NAND and DRAM; I don't think they ever claimed it would be denser than NAND, just denser than DRAM. Also, the Optane SSDs were never locked to Intel systems, just their caching software for Windows and the Optane DIMMs.
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    >Their claims were actually a mix of comparisons against NAND and DRAM; I don't think they ever claimed it would be denser than NAND, just denser than DRAM. You're right. I looked up the slide before commenting to look at the numbers and misread it. Actually, that reminds me that the first time I saw the slide years ago I hoped we were going to have Optane memory sticks and desktops with hundreds of gigabytes of main memory, even if with worse latency. I remember being so disappointed when Optane finally came out and reading the actual numbers. Yeah, the latency was okayish, but the throughput was barely better than NAND. >Also, the Optane SSDs were never locked to Intel systems, just their caching software for Windows and the Optane DIMMs. If anything, that just makes it worse. I was quite interested in Optane, and I can't remember which things were what and what they worked on. The product line was so confusing.
- nolanhergert89 4y ago
  Don't confuse the Optane SSD products (worse binned media over a slower NVMe link) with the higher-performance (and more expensive) Optane Persistent Memory product. For the latter, the latency looks to be sub-microsecond (~100X? SSDs), bandwidth is ~3-5X SSDs, ~10X more endurance, and up to 10X more dense than DRAM (512GB sticks anyone?). Don't have a specific good source though, just from Googling. I wasn't a marketing person, but I was on the engineering side.

anonymousDan 4y ago

Interesting - do you mean Optane PMem (i.e. where it is connected as a DIMM)? Or the Optane SSDs?

tpetry 4y ago
Optane SSDs had been great! They have the fastest write latency which made them e.g. perfect for databases or the ZFS ZIL which is a write of any new block to a special space (on that optane ssd) that will later be rewritten to the slower ssd.

PAPPPmAc 4y ago

IIRC Intel bought Micron out of the 3DXpoint/Optane project in 2018, and (based a some hallway conversations at conferences) folks at Micron were not exactly enthusiastic about the early results from the technology or Intel's overhyping marketing years before then.

fluoridation 4y ago

It had good performance, but part of the problem is that Intel way oversold it at the beginning. They said they would be "1000x faster, 1000x more enduring, and 10x more dense than NAND". In the end none of these promises materialized. They released these puny little drives that had a bit better latency than NVMe SSDs, that were locked to Intel systems, that OSs didn't know what to do with them, and that didn't quite fit anywhere in the memory hierarchy. Yeah, it found a few niche uses, but it was never going to be sustainable.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anonymousDan 4y ago
I wonder if standardisation efforts around things like UCIe and CXL will solve the locked to Intel problem, potentially enabling a sustainable market for such devices in future?
wtallis 4y ago
> "1000x faster, 1000x more enduring, and 10x more dense than NAND" Their claims were actually a mix of comparisons against NAND and DRAM; I don't think they ever claimed it would be denser than NAND, just denser than DRAM. Also, the Optane SSDs were never locked to Intel systems, just their caching software for Windows and the Optane DIMMs.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  >Their claims were actually a mix of comparisons against NAND and DRAM; I don't think they ever claimed it would be denser than NAND, just denser than DRAM. You're right. I looked up the slide before commenting to look at the numbers and misread it. Actually, that reminds me that the first time I saw the slide years ago I hoped we were going to have Optane memory sticks and desktops with hundreds of gigabytes of main memory, even if with worse latency. I remember being so disappointed when Optane finally came out and reading the actual numbers. Yeah, the latency was okayish, but the throughput was barely better than NAND. >Also, the Optane SSDs were never locked to Intel systems, just their caching software for Windows and the Optane DIMMs. If anything, that just makes it worse. I was quite interested in Optane, and I can't remember which things were what and what they worked on. The product line was so confusing.
nolanhergert89 4y ago
Don't confuse the Optane SSD products (worse binned media over a slower NVMe link) with the higher-performance (and more expensive) Optane Persistent Memory product. For the latter, the latency looks to be sub-microsecond (~100X? SSDs), bandwidth is ~3-5X SSDs, ~10X more endurance, and up to 10X more dense than DRAM (512GB sticks anyone?). Don't have a specific good source though, just from Googling. I wasn't a marketing person, but I was on the engineering side.