Optane persistent memory

erek

erek

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What ever could this mean for the real end user customer? Anyone even know?

"Intel knows how the long game is played in PC platforms. It has the platform presence (CPUs, chipsets, media, industry consortium muscle, etc.) to encourage adoption of innovations that make long-term sense. Ultimately, it remains for the market to decide whether DRAM-plug-Optane PMM provides sufficient value to displace DRAM-plus-SSD/HDD. But if the pricing, capacity, and performance stars align, and software partners recognize a heavenly opportunity in the works, we may yet see Optane expand system memory into new use models and leave drive storage as a receding niche."

https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/09/persistent-memory-is-coming-to-a-workstation-near-you/
 
If you have an Intel cpu (certain models) and an m.2 drive using Intel optane drives there's an option to use some of it as system memory (tricks the OS so it sees it as memory anyways). Also supposedly it will survive a reboot and no data lost
 
blandead said:
If you have an Intel cpu (certain models) and an m.2 drive using Intel optane drives there's an option to use some of it as system memory (tricks the OS so it sees it as memory anyways). Also supposedly it will survive a reboot and no data lost
Click to expand...
makes sense since an m.2 drive doesn't need power to retain information.
 
It's a little slower than DRAM but faster then SSD's. Data is not lost when shut off. When I last heard about it a year and a half ago at VMworld, they talked about how the OS could provision it back and forth between storage and memory. Part of it can be working as system ram, then rest as storage, and it can be reconfigured on the fly. It sounds pretty cool. Comes in 512Gb or 128Gb capacities in a dimm size stick, ddr4 pinout compatible (pretty sure), but requires mobo that specifically supports them.

Think RAM and M2 drive all in 1 stick.

Think about having a workstation pc with a few Tb of ram.

As far as the speed, the Intel rep said DDR has about 50ns access time, the Optane memory is ~200ns for the same spec, and SSD's are ~ 10,000ns (I believe it was access time).

Would be nice to try out. No idea what the price is.
 
Hopefully micron releases something along these lines without the intel requirements/prices.
 
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