discussion Intel Optane

[MARSTG]

So what do we know so far for the Intel Optane tech? From what I have heard they will be small lightning fast SSDs that will be used to accelerate the storage once again like Z68 chipset did with SSDs and HDDs. Is just this time we'll accelerate a SSD with another SSD. I also read somewhere that the new Intel RST driver they got out has a special 64GB access reservation, so it seems that the drives, at least initially, will not be larger than 64GB. Anyone has more info?

 

[lowfat]

Current generation Optane has no place outside of datacenters that have a extremely high writes. It isn't faster than NAND ATM. It just has significantly higher write endurance.

 

[Groove]

Beside what you listed I don't think I've seen anything else regarding Optane. I find the lack of information around it a little weird. I feel like it's been hyped more from the mobo manufacturers than by Intel itself. Based on what lowfat said I'm not even sure why it's on the consumer level boards? Maybe there is something more about it that Intel hasn't said yet?

 

[Vittra]

Intel teased that Optane would be one of the features introduced in Kaby Lake a long time ago. It was suspected that other than Optane, there would be no reason for people on Skylake to even contemplate a switch. This ended up being true, as the only other change besides the additional 4x PCI-E 3.0 lanes on the chipset was that 4K processing is more efficient on Kaby Lake. That only matters for streamed content however, since no motherboards have HDMI 2.0 without 3rd party addition.

The most comprehensive info I have seen on Optane was from an Anandtech article some time ago:

Kaby Lake Systems With Intel Optane SSDs Coming Soon

There isn't much of a reason to get a Kaby Lake rig for the purposes of Optane unless you are planning to keep your machine for long enough that we see drive densities increase.

 

[KaptCrunch]

intel hype

more market share is a lot bigger with consumer than biz

after more reading lowfat is on the money

 

[MARSTG]

Yes that is the same article I have read as well. So reading through the comments of the article basically what Optane promises is lower latency, even close to that of RAM, which will make a system a lot more responsive. And one comment was suggesting that Windows could be installed on such a small drive, actually I remember with nostalgia when people were jumping on the Intel X25V 40GB SSD to have it for Windows 7 install.

 

[MARSTG]

More specs : Intel Optane SSD Boasts Impressive Random IOPs & Super Low Latency | HotHardware

 

[Bao]

I saw a presentation last year that Optane was going to eventually allow NORMAL people to replace their high storage NAS's with nand NAS's in the physical form factor of a cell phone... was that all lies?

 

[MARSTG]

Maybe in a few years like 5.

 

[Tyrann]

As someone else stated, it really is more beneficial to enterprise than normal consumers. It won't be cost effective to use in NAS for a few years. We really wouldn't notice the performance difference over SSD/NVMe for gaming or general pc use. HDD to SSD was still the best most noticeable upgrade i've seen in a while.