AMA Intel Optane AMA - Starts Tuesday at 12pm

[Team Intel Optane]

SSDs are becoming the standard now and the terminology for PCI-Express/M.2/etc. based storage are finally becoming household terms in the gaming/performance/AI sectors. However from my perception Optane/3DXpoint technology is generally still in the 'theoretical'/'impractical'/'dream' categories when compared to other SSD technologies for regular consumers. While the tech is definitely different (and better) I feel you guys are competing for the same space that the high end performance PCI-express drives currently occupy.

Do you guys have any plans to change this perception and try to make Optane more mainstream?
What do you feel is your biggest hurdle at this point to making it THE standard for high performance storage solutions? (cost/tech/marketing/availability?)

(just to note i have nothing against the Optane or Intel. In fact I really really want one but trying to justify the cost vs performance vs storage ratios is a hard sell for my frugal self)

Don't think of Intel Optane as a purely storage device. Think of it as a whole system accelerator, as most systems are slowed down by their I/O. Intel Optane is all about eliminating the I/O bottleneck to accelerate system performance. Here's an example of what we mean.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Does using Optane to cache storage increase the size, speed, or effectiveness of system memory?

If not, is there a method for a typical home user to use Optane so that it functions more like system memory instead of storage?

We have a client solution that does exactly what you're asking. It's called Intel Optane Memory. You can find out more here.

 

[joshua123033]

Do you plan to have Optane support for older than Kaby Lake processors or processors lower than the Core processors (e.g. Pentium) in the future?

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Could you use a normal NVMe M.2 SSD instead of Optane? What are some of the advantages over Optane?
Also, what do you do in a situation with multiple HDDs? Can you use more than one Optane for the multiple drives?

Not exactly sure what you're asking, but Intel Optane is available as an NVMe SSD. Intel Optane is much faster than NAND SSDs. You could use Intel Optane as a cache in front of multiple HDDs, but depending on the workload a NAND SSD could also be used as cache--but with lower performance. If your last question is regarding Optane cache-to-storage capacity ratio, we've seen cache ratios as high as 20x. See this vSAN caching guideline as an example.

 

[joshua123033]

Not exactly sure what you're asking, but Intel Optane is available as an NVMe SSD. Intel Optane is much faster than NAND SSDs. You could use Intel Optane as a cache in front of multiple HDDs, but depending on the workload a NAND SSD could also be used as cache--but with lower performance. If your last question is regarding Optane cache-to-storage capacity ratio, we've seen cache ratios as high as 20x. See this vSAN caching guideline as an example.

Thanks for correcting me, I did mean NAND SSDs.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Do you plan to have Optane support for older than Kaby Lake processors or processors lower than the Core processors (e.g. Pentium) in the future?

Intel Optane comes in many forms. Intel Optane Memory works on Kaby Lake systems and beyond. Intel Optane SSDs are available for all systems supporting NVMe drives. Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory is only supported on second generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors.

 

[toms98pc]

Does Optane work in older systems (~2014)that have PCI and PCI-E slots?

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Does Optane work in older systems (~2014)that have PCI and PCI-E slots?

Intel Optane comes in many forms. Intel Optane SSDs are available for all systems supporting NVMe drives. Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory is only supported on second generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

We've seen quite a few questions here at Toms regarding pairing a 16GB or 32GB Optane module with a traditional SSD.
Given current SSD are "fast", especially regarding the near zero access times, even SATA III but especially NVMe, is there a real point or benefit for a typical consumer system to merge these two technologies?

I can absolutely see it paired with an old school spinning platter, but on top of an already fast SSD?

For instance - my house systems are all SSD only. Currently top grade SATA III, but the next iteration will be NVMe drives.
The 905p is too expensive per GB, but would I benefit from a 32GB Optane paired with an NVMe and sufficient system DRAM?

Or are we chasing ever decreasing benefits?

No, we're not chasing ever-decreasing benefits--and yes, we do see the benefit of a combined solution. Check this out! Stay tuned for more details later.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

I am interested in the performance of random reads for the "Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory" modules.

Assuming you had a set of these installed on the appropriate highest end Intel processor on the best motherboard available, I understand the limit is 3TB per chip socket. How many random reads per second can this configuration expect to support (IOPS)?

Performance information will be available at launch. Understand, I/Ops is typically 4K and memory works on cache lines.

 

[joshua123033]

Are you going to be adding more storage to the M.2 Optane in the future to will the extra gigabytes of storage just be added to the PCIe Optane.
Also, do you have a roadmap for future Optane designs? (I haven't found one myself)

 

[jyvet]

I've got multiple questions:

• Unmap command is not needed with Optane. Does it mean there is no internal garbage collection? If I continuously rewrite an optane drive, is there any performance degradation to expect?
• Does the concept of write amplification apply on Optane? If so, under what circonstances?
• What user space library would you suggest to obtain highest IOPs with small block sizes (<= 4KB)? Are you using SPDK or a different toolkit when testing Optane drives?
• Do you know if CPU core frequency has a significant impact on Optane latency?
• Do you have any advice to make IRQs more efficient with Optane (turn off/on IRQ balance, use a dedicated script...)?
• In the specifications we can find write and latency are both 10µs. Fast hardware is putting more and more presure on the software stack. Is the current generation of optane drives already slowed down by the software stack (drivers, user space lib)?
• Is there any access pattern which lead to better latencies (sequential vs random, strided vs non-stride, offset, ...)?

Evolution and Future Products:

• In what time frame do you think the 3D Xpoint technology could reach latencies below the microsecond?
• Is there any chance to see some hybrid drives (3D Xpoint + NAND)? If so, do you think users/the OS will be able to select in which region to write? I believe that feature would be really interesting for new kind of file systems (for instance to put metadata and small data fragments on 3D Xpoint).

 

[Thrashmaster1187]

I have a huge amount of games (700+) that I would like to have installed in my next build. Because of the very large amount of data, this is going to require, I would like to use something like the Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST14000DM001 14TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive with an optane drive to increase speed. Is the best option to use the Optane Memory M10 Series (64GB, M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0, 20Nm, 3D XPoint) or to go with something bigger, say the Intel Optane SSD 905P Series M.2 22110 380GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 3D XPoint Internal Solid State Drive, given that my drive is going to be much bigger than average.

(also this HDD will be a secondary drive I plan to install an SSD to store the OS)

 

[Compuser10165]

Adressed to Team Intel Optane (for the AMA period): What are the future prospects estimations in terms of speed for Intel Optane Memory when other transfer standards are introduced (for example, PCIe 4.0/5.0 and further)?

 

[jkflipflop98]

Why aren't your computers in the fab using Optane technology? If it's so cool, surely you're using it in your production facilities?

 

[DustoMan]

Can the Optane branded SSD drives that are sold in higher capacities than the 16/32GB modules be used for accelerating a games/data drive or do I have to use the lower capacity to do that?

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Add-in hardware RAID controller options for NVMe SSDs are limited, often significantly limit performance, and add cost. You can use Linux MDRAID for a higher level of availability, but you can also consider an Intel product called VROC which is an alternative for NVMe SSDs directly attached to the CPU. If you insist on RAID within the node as your data availability model, take a look for Servers that support VROC.

Thanks for the response. I use SSDs in DAS configuration with virtual hosts, so getting a blend of enough capacity with the right level of fault-tolerance is always a balancing act. Generally, I want to use Optane drives in a RAID-1 or 10 config (with replication/full backup), but the current smaller storage sizes of Optane have so far been a bit of a limiting factor. I'd love to see the Optane DC P4800X expand the capacity & lower in price, as I'm sure everyone who considers it also wishes.

One issue I've found is that enterprise providers (like Dell, HP, etc.) don't do enough to support higher-end storage for SMBs. For Optane, our choices are either AICs - which are limited due to enough available PCIe slots, especially in 1U - or U.2 connections usually through a RAID HBA. So sometimes you can have a h/w guy configuring a server for RAID-5 through the default RAID HBA just to maximize the total storage capacity; they don't always check to see if that's the best config. So it would be nice if the enterprise providers could support Optane solutions better for DAS configs that can optimize performance, which usually is the main reason for going with Optane storage.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Are you going to be adding more storage to the M.2 Optane in the future to will the extra gigabytes of storage just be added to the PCIe Optane.
Also, do you have a roadmap for future Optane designs? (I haven't found one myself)

We don't discuss future roadmaps, but we'll continue to deliver innovation. Regarding M.2, that is a physical connector and, in fact, the protocol running on it is PCIe.

 

[Rossamino]

Is Optane as fast as 3DXpoint is going to get or are there further improvements that can be made with either the phase change material or the underlying control system? How close are we to optimizing theoretical speed of the current technology? Thanx.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

I have a huge amount of games (700+) that I would like to have installed in my next build. Because of the very large amount of data, this is going to require, I would like to use something like the Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST14000DM001 14TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive with an optane drive to increase speed. Is the best option to use the Optane Memory M10 Series (64GB, M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0, 20Nm, 3D XPoint) or to go with something bigger, say the Intel Optane SSD 905P Series M.2 22110 380GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 3D XPoint Internal Solid State Drive, given that my drive is going to be much bigger than average.

(also this HDD will be a secondary drive I plan to install an SSD to store the OS)

For your best performance, you want the operating system and the application running on your fastest media--which, in this case, should be an Intel Optane SSD. In my case it's Windows and World of Tanks, but you seem to have a few more games than I do!

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Adressed to Team Intel Optane (for the AMA period): What are the future prospects estimations in terms of speed for Intel Optane Memory when other transfer standards are introduced (for example, PCIe 4.0/5.0 and further)?

We don't discuss our future plans, but you might consider the fact that it's about to be introduced on the memory channel and draw your own conclusions from there.

It's about time the storage interface caught up with Intel Optane technology.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Can the Optane branded SSD drives that are sold in higher capacities than the 16/32GB modules be used for accelerating a games/data drive or do I have to use the lower capacity to do that?

It all depends on your usage. If you're a hardcore gamer, you'd be better off with a higher capacity Intel Optane SSD.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

Is Optane as fast as 3DXpoint is going to get or are there further improvements that can be made with either the phase change material or the underlying control system? How close are we to optimizing theoretical speed of the current technology? Thanx.

We don't discuss our future plans, but you might consider the fact that it's about to be introduced on the memory channel and draw your own conclusions from there.

 

[Team Intel Optane]

I've got multiple questions:

• Unmap command is not needed with Optane. Does it mean there is no internal garbage collection? If I continuously rewrite an optane drive, is there any performance degradation to expect?
• Does the concept of write amplification apply on Optane? If so, under what circonstances? To answer your first two questions: Intel Optane is a write-in-place media, therefore it incurs no performance penalties from garbage collection or its associated write amplification. We have defenestrated garbage collection!
• What user space library would you suggest to obtain highest IOPs with small block sizes (<= 4KB)? Are you using SPDK or a different toolkit when testing Optane drives? We use SPDK (check out this link) . It's well named as a Storage Performance Development Kit.
• Do you know if CPU core frequency has a significant impact on Optane latency? These are independent, but Intel Optane's ability to deliver data quickly means that your CPU's utilization increases dramatically. As an example, check this out from the Evaluator Group.
• Do you have any advice to make IRQs more efficient with Optane (turn off/on IRQ balance, use a dedicated script...)? Sorry, no advice!
• In the specifications we can find write and read? and latency are both 10µs. Fast hardware is putting more and more presure on the software stack. Is the current generation of optane drives already slowed down by the software stack (drivers, user space lib)? Software can't hide behind slow storage anymore! There's a lot of work going on between Intel and the software community, (ISV and Open Source), to continuously optimize applications to take advantage of Intel Optane's amazing performance.
• Is there any access pattern which lead to better latencies (sequential vs random, strided vs non-stride, offset, ...)? Intel Optane's ability to operate at tight peak performance at low queue depths--combined with high-balanced read/write performance--enables it to deliver amazing performance with any access pattern. So, not only is it fast--it's always fast.

Evolution and Future Products:

• In what time frame do you think the 3D Xpoint technology could reach latencies below the microsecond? We're about to launch it on the memory channel where the latency is measured in nanoseconds. So, now!
• Is there any chance to see some hybrid drives (3D Xpoint + NAND)? If so, do you think users/the OS will be able to select in which region to write? I believe that feature would be really interesting for new kind of file systems (for instance to put metadata and small data fragments on 3D Xpoint). It's even better than a chance! At CES, we disclosed Intel Optane Memory H10 with Solid State Storage. It combines the responsiveness of Intel Optane memory and the storage capacity of QLC NAND in a single M.2 form factor. More details coming soon . . .

 

[MikeMK2]

I'm using 900P now and I'm super happy with it.
I have two questions:

Will Optane DC Persistence Memory come to client side in near future?
As far as I know the Intel 900P/905P is using a FPGA as its controller. Will it receive any firmware update to let them bypass the i/o stack of the operating system and be used as in place execution memory?