Intel Shows Off 3D XPoint Memory Performance

Megalith

Megalith

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3D XPoint technology, which will be released under the Optane brand, is apparently living up to the performance alluded to by Intel back in the summer.

“We have been real careful to not show this with slides, but with working demos, because I want people to get excited and realize that this is coming,” he said. “This isn’t five years from now, this isn’t two years from now. This is next year, and this is going to transform how we think about data and memory and storage.”
 
I guess if you're looking to do a build next year you might as well wait for the Optane SSDs at this point, and skip over the other NVMe solutions that are out now.

I'm more interested in seeing what the DIMM form factor can do.
 
would this DIMM form factor be different than DDR4? won't it be slower than real RAM?
 
jwcalla said:
It'll be slower than real RAM, so it probably won't replace DDR4.
Click to expand...

I was wondering more about the interface... Won't they have to make a different bus and interface for this DIMM style to make sure that you keep real RAM separated from this super SSD?
 
jwcalla said:
It'll be slower than real RAM, so it probably won't replace DDR4.
Click to expand...
It's non-volatile so it's not really meant to replace DDR plus it's not as durable or fast so it wouldn't be suitable at all.

But it is non-volatile, more durable, faster in throughput and response time than NAND by far.

Cost for density seems to be the only issue at this point because that's all NAND brings to the table at the moment. That and what interface would actually suit this kind of memory outside of enterprise solutions.
 
mkrohn said:
I was wondering more about the interface... Won't they have to make a different bus and interface for this DIMM style to make sure that you keep real RAM separated from this super SSD?
Click to expand...

I don't think Intel has finalized the interface approach, but according to the article they do want to get some test samples out by the end of the year, so I assume they have some kind of preliminary ideas. I too am interested in learning more about how they intend to do it.
 
Krzanich added that data encryption in the DIMM, so that data at rest on the DIMM – it will take us all a while to get used to that – is secured.
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I wonder if this encryption comes with an NSA data backup feature.
 
I don't see why they wouldn't just tweak the memory controller and allow them to interface directly with the memory controller. So in essence, you would have some DDR4 or whatever in a few memory slots, then like one or two of these in some other memory slots, but these would be non-volatile like a disk or whatever. No more taking up PCIe lanes and resources and wait states. Direct access from you memory bus...
 
We have been real careful to not show this with slides, but with working demos...
Click to expand...

If you don't actually explain what the demos are showing... how is that any different from just showing a slide with some numbers? That's not a demo, that's a commercial.

I really hate marketing people. They're almost as bad as lawyers and theologians.
 
There's no reason they couldn't use the NVMe protocol with this. And while they're at it, they could use m.2 @the form factor.
 
lazz said:
There's no reason they couldn't use the NVMe protocol with this. And while they're at it, they could use m.2 @the form factor.
Click to expand...

That's what they're doing for the first round (with the SSDs).

Obviously NVMe is too slow so the DIMM form factor is expected to show the full potential.
 
Just to be clear what Intel is targeting with the DIMM form factor:

Typical SATA SSD reads and writes around 0.5 gigabytes/sec.
NVME SSDs are doing around 2.0 to 2.5 gigabytes/sec at the moment.
DDR3 RAM running at 1666MHz does about 100 gigabytes/sec, and DDR4 is faster.

So there's a huge performance gap between SSDs of any sort and RAM, but there is also a huge capacity gap going the other way. Nothing exists between these two extremes.

The DIMM form factor of 3D XPoint memory won't be as fast as DDR3 or DDR4, but it will be much faster than SSDs, and it will be LARGE, starting at 6 TB. It will most certainly be so expensive that no consumer can afford it, but for enterprise/server use it will be magical.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
If you don't actually explain what the demos are showing...
Click to expand...
It's showing a relative performance comparison between a NAND SSD vs X-Point enhanced SSD. While the Oracle benchmarks are unspecified, the results are not reported; it's the low level IOPS and latency which are being highlighted, presumably under a pretty heavy request load.

This is certainly more interesting than a slide, and it's not exactly a worthless marketing commercial either. It shows that X-Point equipped devices are actually delivering on low level performance claims. Whether or not it's worth it will certainly need more representative real-world benchmarks to evaluate.
 
This will be nifty for PoE and ESO, should I still be playing them. It'll likely be pretty good for whatever new games I pick up.

Other then games my computer is already fast enough for everything else I do.
 
So, i am thinking that certain enterprise clients must be salivating at the thought of that performance for their massive databases.

Would i be wrong to think that Banking in general could be interested? also of course Google's server networks, Amazon, MS Azure and the like would be interested for high performance offerings.

I don't see this, the actual "fit in a ddr4 slot ramdisk", trickling down to consumers for quite a while but it would be interesting... a 32Gb ddr4 slot and a 320Gb 3dxpoint ramdisk + 6 TB HDD to work as basic storage could be the standard in a couple years instead of ssd's.
 
evilsofa said:
Just to be clear what Intel is targeting with the DIMM form factor:

Typical SATA SSD reads and writes around 0.5 gigabytes/sec.
NVME SSDs are doing around 2.0 to 2.5 gigabytes/sec at the moment.
DDR3 RAM running at 1666MHz does about 100 gigabytes/sec, and DDR4 is faster.

So there's a huge performance gap between SSDs of any sort and RAM, but there is also a huge capacity gap going the other way. Nothing exists between these two extremes.

The DIMM form factor of 3D XPoint memory won't be as fast as DDR3 or DDR4, but it will be much faster than SSDs, and it will be LARGE, starting at 6 TB. It will most certainly be so expensive that no consumer can afford it, but for enterprise/server use it will be magical.
Click to expand...

Just noticed I made a really bad error. DDR3 RAM running at 1666MHz does 102.4 gigabits per second, not gigabytes, so that's really 12.8 gigabytes/sec.

DDR4 ranges from 17 gigabytes/sec at 2133MHz to 25.6 gigabytes/sec at 3200MHz.
 
Yeap they are hoping to bank in a sweet spot with the slower than ddr4 yet 10x higher density.

The use will be limited but indeed for certain enterprise operations that require vfast database access it will be a godsend... hopefully in less than 6 years it will become affordable for us lowly peasants, right?... right??? (i like to dream)
 
Damn I don't even know what I would do with that much storage performance but I can't wait for nvme drives to drop in price to pick one up for myself :)
 
Big ram disk fan and next build will be upping to 32-64gb or more to take further advantage of this.

However I don't expect this to be remotely affordable for consumer grade builds for a while. Sad though, it does look to be a great solution for ram disk users.
 
N4CR said:
Big ram disk fan and next build will be upping to 32-64gb or more to take further advantage of this.

However I don't expect this to be remotely affordable for consumer grade builds for a while. Sad though, it does look to be a great solution for ram disk users.
Click to expand...

Is there a perceptible difference to you between ram disk and SSD? SSD's have worked just as well for my "ram disk" needs. Since it's usually access time I am looking at, and SSD is noticeably better on that front. Percentage wise, memory is even better, but is it perceptible?
 
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