Pushing Intel Optane Potential: RAID Performance Explored

[none12345]

"NONE12345 - these are CACHE drives not mass storage devices. Please bother to actually read the article next time."

I did read the article, did you? From the first paragraph..

"Today we examine one option that combines three Optane Memory SSDs together in a RAID 0 array to create a large volume for installing an operating system and a few programs."

I responded to the article.

Right now this tech is extremely under whelming. We were promised 1-3 orders of magnitude improvement in various metrics, and this first generation is seriously lacking compared to what was promised when this tech was first announced.

Im aware the point is a cache drive, but it really only does something for mechanical drives. ....Just go buy a ssd instead, youll be better off. If you need more ram, go buy more ram instead, youll be better off.

Tho with ram, its unusually expensive right now due to various market forces creating a dram shortage. So, a short term argument i guess could be made for this over ram, but it will only hold short term. Id still say you are better off adding another $40 and getting more ram, if you are buying this because you need more ram.

 

[InvalidError]

We were promised 1-3 orders of magnitude improvement in various metrics, and this first generation is seriously lacking compared to what was promised when this tech was first announced.

Take technology that is hypothetically a million times faster and slap it behind an interface that is only three times as fast SATA3, you end up with something that is about three times as fast as fast conventional SSDs.

Even if you had DIMM-based Optane, you would still need software written to concurrently load data using multiple CPU threads to avoid storage IO getting bottlenecked by the sequential nature of most software's IOs.

 

[Nintendork]

Funny thing is the best use for this is a big swap drive (16GB) + browser installed on it.

250GB SSD like crucial MX300 as pretty cheap.

 

[TomHaX]

Do not compare apples and oranges. Either all single or all RAID. Otherwise it is misleading. Stop FUD. Get the facts:

Intel crosses an unacceptable ethical line
http://semiaccurate.com/2017/03/27/intel-crosses-unacceptable-ethical-line

 

[WoenK]

First of...Raid0 actually is not real RAID because it has no redundnacy. No one with a sane mind would ever use something like that on a production server or workstation. "Inecreased chance of failure" is putting it really "cuddly" and "fluffy". Second, to compare a 3-way Raid 0 with a non-Raid is no comparisation.

 

[techy1966]

another con would Intel's requirement of needing latest gen CPU and chipset. Not only do they like to change sockets often or not go into extreme measures to stop you from overclocking non K CPU's. They try to make you upgrade to latest everything just to use this new tech. Hell forget it totally if you got an AMD system. You know a company has been on top to long when...........I hope Ryzen and Vega do well so Intel and Nvidia as well are brought back down to earth because I am gonna need a new CPU & graphics card soon and I would like to get a shiny new i7 & new video card but if these two companies don't stop acting so stupid and being very very greedy my new rig will be 100% AMD powered.

 

[msroadkill612]

What rubbish.

A lane rich Threadripper, using onboard nvme ports, would utterly trounce this rig on every count, even using el cheapo nvme ssdS (the worst of which still dominate the best sata ssdS). (~$100 per 256GB ssd?)

Diminishing returns occur, but a third drive is a boon for deep queues.

With ryzen; its either one or two SINGLE (no raid) native nvme drives, ~1GBps sequential raid sata ssdS, or an 8 bit 2 port nvme storage card, which shares the gpuS 16 lane allocation.

A 24 or 28 pcie3 lane intel should just allow a raid pair of nvme AND a 16 lane gpu - if as the author says, u can get past intels bear traps.

 

[msroadkill612]

Cute:

"Over time Optane will get faster, larger, and cheaper. What we want is for Intel to mass produce it, make it cheap, and then give us the highest performing devices at an affordable price. If you think that's going to happen soon, then you don't know Intel."