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Intel's new Optane SSDs (more powerful using 3D XPoint)
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Intel's new Optane SSDs (more powerful using 3D XPoint)

BlaZeBlaZe Member, Host Rep

Intel and Micron Technology have been working on a new-generation memory technology since about 2012. It's called 3D XPoint (not to be confused with 3D NAND), and it's absurdly fast. A good way to think of it is as a compromise between the speed of DRAM and the capacity of traditional flash storage. Unlike RAM, 3D XPoint is non-volatile (doesn't lose what it's storing when the power is off), and it's about four times denser. It's more expensive per gigabyte than NAND flash — the current technology inside SSDs — but it's faster in nearly every possible way, especially when it comes to latency and reading / writing small bits of data.

Full story: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/4/20/15375828/intel-optane-3d-xpoint-ssd-reviews

What do you guys think, will it create a storm to the pricing of existing SSDs or not ?
Any other view?

Comments

  • No storm but it's an interesting new alternative.

  • good for servers because of IOPS. Will not be usable maybe at least first 2-3 years. Because 16gb / 32gb drives it's not funny.

  • BlaZeBlaZe Member, Host Rep

    The benchmarking community must be pretty excited to try out & show benchmark results xD

  • There's a 375GB NVMe version, reviewed and benchmarked on anandtech.com. It's an improvement over conventional SSD and I'd say worth the cost premium for heavily loaded databases but probably not much else.

  • WSSWSS Member

    @willie said:
    There's a 375GB NVMe version, reviewed and benchmarked on anandtech.com. It's an improvement over conventional SSD and I'd say worth the cost premium for heavily loaded databases but probably not much else.

    You can setup a pretty nice OS hardware cluster for the cost of that single drive. Assuming, of course, you mean to setup one utilizing that, you're looking at probably $5k to start, which is nothing in a real market- but is it worth that for 3 servers when you could get at least double running standard NVMe?

    Pass.

  • It's not about space, it's about minimizing latency for applications that need that.

  • WSSWSS Member

    @willie said:
    It's not about space, it's about minimizing latency for applications that need that.

    "Don't be shitty at design" seems kind of a troll-grade response, but it actually fits. This is very niche right now, and if your solution is to throw more expensive hardware at a problem, rather than MORE hardware, well..

  • @WSS

    It really depends on a person's needs.

    Which will perform better? 4 pentiums or 1 high end Xeon processor?

  • WSSWSS Member

    @FlamesRunner said:
    @WSS

    It really depends on a person's needs.

    Which will perform better? 4 pentiums or 1 high end Xeon processor?

    This isn't a very good analogy- what will work better? Setting up a good database schema or just using auto_increment and keys that don't help the searching parameters?

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    IIRC this one takes up 1 ram slot each, so if you have E3 with 4... that's half of your capacity.

  • If you have a high enough query load, you need all the speed you can get. The servers we used to use (2x E5-2670, 256GB ram, 4x(?) Intel DC P3700) were on the order of $20K a pop at the time, and supported 1000s of clients. We would have happily paid the extra for Optane.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    BlaZe said: What do you guys think, will it create a storm to the pricing of existing SSDs or not ? Any other view?

    There have been alternate, faster forms of storage than SSD for a long time. e.g., Fusion-IO which is easily 2x the speed if not more. It is also persistent RAM-based and has been in the game for a lot longer...at least since 2008ish.

    Pure speed is not the only criteria...price is the other major one.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • BlaZeBlaZe Member, Host Rep
    edited April 2017

    @raindog308 said:

    BlaZe said: What do you guys think, will it create a storm to the pricing of existing SSDs or not ? Any other view?

    There have been alternate, faster forms of storage than SSD for a long time. e.g., Fusion-IO which is easily 2x the speed if not more. It is also persistent RAM-based and has been in the game for a lot longer...at least since 2008ish.

    Pure speed is not the only criteria...price is the other major one.

    Speed + Data Reliability might the key ?

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    I watched a video today on the Intel Optane stuff and where it really helps is when you're running strictly HDDs, when running with SSDs there is minimal improvement at all.

  • "3D XPoint drive cached ssd raid-10" offers with incredible iops will start from Ramnode very soon ;-)

  • jlayjlay Member
    edited April 2017

    I think it'll be nice for servers where more I/O is always better. Desktops/laptops probably won't see a tangible difference between this and normal SSDs performance wise, so I think the main difference will likely be capacity/pricing. It's a good replacement/successor to Intel's SRT (SSD caching) as well, but purely mechanical systems are less and less common every day (especially in laptops) and the Optane caching has little to no impact when paired with SSDs.

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR

    That did not take too long...

    https://www.runabove.com/labs/IntelOptane/

    Thanked by 1inthecloudblog
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