Intel Shipping Optane Memory Modules to Partners for Testing

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Hexus is reporting that Intel is shipping Optane RAM to partners for testing. This is a good thing for all your memory junkies out there. Intel has been making a big deal about Optane for a while, but we are a good ways off to seeing it in any desktop system for a good while. Hit up the video refresher, so you can get fresher with Optane. Intel originally started PR about this 3D XPoint Technology in July of 2015.
 
I really want to be excited about this, but then I put it back on the shelf for safe keeping.
 
it would be nice to get some real performance numbers instead of talking about hot/warm/cold storage.
 
...and are we talking Samsung VNAND performance and durability, or something surpassing that?
 
3DXPoint memory/ssd is huge. And Intel increased capex 2.5B$ for this alone. Cloud and enterprise is in long queues for it.

aliaskary77 said:
...and are we talking Samsung VNAND performance and durability, or something surpassing that?
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Much better in everything. (Besides cost.)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9470/...-1000x-higher-performance-endurance-than-nand

Optane-3D-Xpoint-04.png
 
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I'm curious to see what happens to volatile storage over the next few years. Will we see the death of RAM? With maybe a bit more on die cache on cpus, and Optane 2/3 doing everything else?
 
I thought ibread somewhere raw speeds is similar to the samsung 960s but has some type of multithreading or multitasking advantage thats like 100x better than anything else... Its slipping my mind.
 
oROEchimaru said:
I thought ibread somewhere raw speeds is similar to the samsung 960s but has some type of multithreading or multitasking advantage thats like 100x better than anything else... Its slipping my mind.
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Access time alone is like 10x faster. Its very different.
 
I have been interested to see how this does in testing and real world for a long time, but that sort of information is still not even close to being released it seems, at least in any real detail thats not done in marketing fashion.

From what I remember reading, it will be a long, long time before we see this stuff hit the desktop user. They had a number of stages and uses before it ever made it to desktop use, from the map I remember seeing I was thinking it could take years AFTER it started shipping and that was dependent on supply keeping up. Has that changed?
 
I dont think there is any plans for consumer NVDIMMs. Only servers.

For SSDs, you can see it already. 32GB Optane caches and later we see bigger regular sized SSDs.
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/in...ered-in-16gb-and-32-gb-3d-xpoint-storage.html

I think in 2018 will be the year you can buy something like 500-1000GB NVME based M.2 Optane/QuintX SSDs for your PC. Then the massive server demand for it should also be more under control.
 
Samsung m2 drives are doing 3GB/s. So assuming the optane is 10x faster. Then we should be seeing 30GB/s.
 
BreezeDM said:
They aren't getting anywhere near that anymore. http://semiaccurate.com/2016/09/12/intels-xpoint-pretty-much-broken/
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If true, pretty shitty of them to state that.

However, still promising, as 10x improvements over night over current tech is a HUGE jump, considering where we are now and gains seen in speed/endurance. Any gain is welcome, and if it can be done cheaper as one of those slides claimed over current tech, sign me up! But I am still holding off to see what it is like in the wild, along with where pricing ends up landing.
 
Galvin said:
Samsung m2 drives are doing 3GB/s. So assuming the optane is 10x faster. Then we should be seeing 30GB/s.
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Would you say a 600MB/sec SSD is only 3 times faster than a 200MB/sec HD? Or the same speed as 3 of said HDs in RAID0?

I assume you refer to the Samsung 961 SSD. Optane/QuintX got an access time below 10us. While the 961 is what, 80-100us?

The P3700 used in the Optane bench is better than the 961.

Mixed workloads?
r_600x450.png

r_600x450.png
 
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Shintai said:
I dont think there is any plans for consumer NVDIMMs. Only servers.

For SSDs, you can see it already. 32GB Optane caches and later we see bigger regular sized SSDs.
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/in...ered-in-16gb-and-32-gb-3d-xpoint-storage.html

I think in 2018 will be the year you can buy something like 500-1000GB NVME based M.2 Optane/QuintX SSDs for your PC. Then the massive server demand for it should also be more under control.
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You ain't seen nothing yet. DNA is just around the corner, I'm willing to offer a few strands of mine, cause I'm a firm believer in Quality.
aliaskary77 said:
...and are we talking Samsung VNAND performance and durability, or something surpassing that?
Click to expand...
You ain't seen nothing yet until DNA kicks in. I'm even volunteering a few strands of mine because I know their looking for quality not quantity.;)
 
If you build a new system soon would it make more sense to just use a cheaper SATA solid state drive to hold you over until Optane comes out? And just ignore the 950/960 evo/pro options?
 
Shintai said:
Would you say a 600MB/sec SSD is only 3 times faster than a 200MB/sec HD? Or the same speed as 3 of said HDs in RAID0?

I assume you refer to the Samsung 961 SSD. Optane/QuintX got an access time below 10us. While the 961 is what, 80-100us?

The P3700 used in the Optane bench is better than the 961.

Mixed workloads?
r_600x450.png

r_600x450.png
Click to expand...

Anandtech reviewed it last year, read speeds of 3000MB/sec or 3GB/sec
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10698/samsung-announces-960-pro-and-960-evo-m2-pcie-ssds
So if intels stuff can do 10x faster, then I would expect 30GB/sec from them eventually. Or at least 10GB/sec minimum, otherwise not going to be impressed. We have 3GB/sec right now.
 
Yeah, this has been the biggest waste of promotional space on this forum since Bulldozer. Two years of promo materials, and your first shot out-the-door is a misfire.

If Intel hadn't put numbers in product literature, then we wouldn't be so pissed off here.
 
Galvin said:
Anandtech reviewed it last year, read speeds of 3000MB/sec or 3GB/sec
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10698/samsung-announces-960-pro-and-960-evo-m2-pcie-ssds
So if intels stuff can do 10x faster, then I would expect 30GB/sec from them eventually. Or at least 10GB/sec minimum, otherwise not going to be impressed. We have 3GB/sec right now.
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PCIe x4 is limited to 4GB/sec.

And you should see the graphs I posted. It only reads 3000MB/sec if its a large single file essentially. Moderate workload and you are already down to 500MB/sec. Some more heavy SQL load and you may be below 100MB/sec (See the Microsoft channel9 link). Not to mention it will have access times that's ~10x faster and IOPS in the ~10x range.

You wouldn't say 3 HDs in RAID0 is as fast as a SATA SSD would you? ;)
 
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