Lenovo Announces Kaby Lake/Optane Laptops

[patrickjp93]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10932/kaby-lake-systems-with-intel-optane-ssds-coming-soon

 

Quote

Lenovo's announcement today of a new generation of ThinkPads based on Intel's Kaby Lake platform includes brief but tantalizing mention of Optane,

 

Several of Lenovo's newly announced ThinkPads will offer 16GB Optane SSDs in M.2 2242 form factor paired with hard drives as an alternative to a using a single NVMe SSD with NAND flash memory (usually TLC NAND, with a portion used as SLC cache).

 

The new generation of ThinkPads will be hitting the market in January and February 2017, but Lenovo and Intel haven't indicated when the configurations with Optane will be available. Other sources in the industry are telling us that Optane is still suffering from delays, so while we hope to see a working demo at CES, the Optane-equipped notebooks may not actually launch until much later in the year. We also expect the bulk of the initial supply of 3D XPoint memory to go to the enterprise market, just like virtually all of Intel and Micron's 3D MLC NAND output has been used for enterprise SSDs so far.

Honestly, the size doesn't concern me. OS boots are not QD 16+ workloads, and Intel's Optane products already significantly beat out Samsung's very best SSDs where it counts: QD1/2/4. Booting will be snappier even if on paper it doesn't look like it should from mainstream SSD marketing material.

 

I'm not in the market for a new laptop and won't be for another 3 years probably, but I can't wait to see the reviews.

[patrickjp93]

2 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Pay more for slightly faster boot that is barely noticeable, and backtrack to slower more power hungry mechanical drives.

Or is someone going to argue that it makes a big difference... at 16GB?

Well, is the whole OS in RAM full time? It should improve overall system snappiness. It will also improve swap file responsiveness for programs which do swap operations instead of existing in memory full-time.

[Coaxialgamer]

People keep forgetting that 3d xpoint is branded as memory for a reason.  It isn't really meant  as a true replacement  for nand,  but more of a non volatile replacement ( or complement)  to dram. 

The main advantage of optane compared to nand is not its speed,  rather it is its low latency,  which is orders of magnitudes lower than nand, while being 10x the density compared to dram, all while at a lower cost. Imagine if you never needed for software to load into ram anymore?  As in everything would already be loaded from the moment you start your pc? 

That is the true potential of optane.  Not a slightly faster version of existing nvme drives.. 

[MageTank]

1 hour ago, patrickjp93 said:

Well, is the whole OS in RAM full time? It should improve overall system snappiness. It will also improve swap file responsiveness for programs which do swap operations instead of existing in memory full-time.

I run a 20GB Primocache on my system, and I must say, it does help responsiveness quite a bit. What people need to understand is that Optane isn't exactly a replacement for traditional storage, but rather a supplement to it. Running your OS with ram acts as write defering, preventing most of the mundane writes from hitting your SSD's, prolonging their lifespan quite a bit.

 

Now, Primocache doesn't alter my boot times at all (mostly because it's not loaded before windows) but even if it did, my system already boots in roughly 6-10 seconds (depending on cold/warm boot) so I can't imagine it getting much faster than that, as some things can't be helped (general POST/initialization of other components).

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Pay more for slightly faster boot that is barely noticeable, and backtrack to slower more power hungry mechanical drives.

Or is someone going to argue that it makes a big difference... at 16GB?

These are system accelerator drives, not full on SSDs. They're designed specifically to act as a "Intel Rapid Storage" caches for hard drives similar to how hybrid hard drives work.

 

It's not just about OS boot speed, if you play certain games a lot or load certain files lots it'll make them faster.

 

Note it won't cache your full OS or game, just the files that the hard drive is slowest with and accesses most.

 

It also gets used as scratch space during rapid writes, drastically spreading up certain workloads like video editing.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, Sniperfox47 said:

These are system accelerator drives, not full on SSDs. They're designed specifically to act as a "Intel Rapid Storage" caches for hard drives similar to how hybrid hard drives work.

 

It's not just about OS boot speed, if you play certain games a lot or load certain files lots it'll make them faster.

 

Note it won't cache your full OS or game, just the files that the hard drive is slowest with and accesses most.

 

It also gets used as scratch space during rapid writes, drastically spreading up certain workloads like video editing.

Another great feature of Primocache, using SSD's to cache HDD's, lol. Sadly, I only have an M.2 drive in my system, no longer have any spinners.

[patrickjp93]

40 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I run a 20GB Primocache on my system, and I must say, it does help responsiveness quite a bit. What people need to understand is that Optane isn't exactly a replacement for traditional storage, but rather a supplement to it. Running your OS with ram acts as write defering, preventing most of the mundane writes from hitting your SSD's, prolonging their lifespan quite a bit.

 

Now, Primocache doesn't alter my boot times at all (mostly because it's not loaded before windows) but even if it did, my system already boots in roughly 6-10 seconds (depending on cold/warm boot) so I can't imagine it getting much faster than that, as some things can't be helped (general POST/initialization of other components).

But that is a matter of cost. Flash wasn't a storage replacement, until it was and is.

 

You'd be surprised. If you disabled most of the system delays at UEFI, you can shrink your boot time to be 5 seconds even now. With Optane, that can be cut clean in half.

38 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Another great feature of Primocache, using SSD's to cache HDD's, lol. Sadly, I only have an M.2 drive in my system, no longer have any spinners.

I'll join you in that club when I return to the States in all likelihood. My Mom's already a member. My Dad won't be far behind. My younger brother needs a touch more than 2TB, so he will be the last holdout.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

But that is a matter of cost. Flash wasn't a storage replacement, until it was and is.

 

You'd be surprised. If you disabled most of the system delays at UEFI, you can shrink your boot time to be 5 seconds even now. With Optane, that can be cut clean in half.

I'll join you in that club when I return to the States in all likelihood. My Mom's already a member. My Dad won't be far behind. My younger brother needs a touch more than 2TB, so he will be the last holdout.

Am about to be investing in a 1TB 960 Evo to hold me off for a little while. Wire management in the node 202 is a little cramped, so not having sata cables helps.

 

 

[tlink]

3 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

People keep forgetting that 3d xpoint is branded as memory for a reason.  It isn't really meant  as a true replacement  for nand,  but more of a non volatile replacement ( or complement)  to dram. 

The main advantage of optane compared to nand is not its speed,  rather it is its low latency,  which is orders of magnitudes lower than nand, while being 10x the density compared to dram, all while at a lower cost. Imagine if you never needed for software to load into ram anymore?  As in everything would already be loaded from the moment you start your pc? 

That is the true potential of optane.  Not a slightly faster version of existing nvme drives.. 

i'm sold, how long (if its even compatible) till we have m.2 drives for it?

[cbodenberger]

It'd be interesting to see how this tech is handled OS side. The way intels video about this sounded is that this is going (to the average consumer) to be like a hyper-speed hibernate. and if so you'd be running N-V pretty much from day 1 of the devices boot. it sounds like a really easy way to slow down a system in the long-term. Sorta like a false uptime of, all the time... Windows (insert version # here) Sounds like it would be not so great of a target OS to implement this on without some changes that perhaps Intel have figured out. I could be wrong but it's my experience that Windows always needs full reboots constantly, updates are a nightmare, and the longer it runs the slower it gets even with regular maintenance... And yet i'm still using Windows as my main OS on 3 of my 4 computers.

[Granular]

No OLED panels, no 5Gb/s ethernet and Optane will be just a 16GB cache.

Them resolving to not put bloatware on the new devices would be noteworthy if Microsoft weren't themselves baking all sorts of crapware into even 'professional' versions of Windows nowadays.

[Sniperfox47]

8 hours ago, tlink said:

i'm sold, how long (if its even compatible) till we have m.2 drives for it?

The system accelerator drives that these laptops use are NVMe m.2 drives.

 

If you mean the memory, it won't be in m.2 form factor, it'll be normal DIMMs just like current nvRAM sticks.

[Phate.exe]

9 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

You'd be surprised. If you disabled most of the system delays at UEFI, you can shrink your boot time to be 5 seconds even now. With Optane, that can be cut clean in half.

 

I'll join you in that club when I return to the States in all likelihood. My Mom's already a member. My Dad won't be far behind. My younger brother needs a touch more than 2TB, so he will be the last holdout.

More than half of the boot time on my linux box are system delays for things like the intel management platform, and the bootloader screen.  I could easily go through and disable those, but the machine never gets turned off so meh.

 

Now that I'm keeping all of my media and program installers on another machine, I'm going to try to go SSD-only on my next build.  Worst-case if it doesn't work out, I've been hoarding a small pile of 2TB Ultrastars.

[Coaxialgamer]

9 hours ago, tlink said:

i'm sold, how long (if its even compatible) till we have m.2 drives for it?

The technology still has a very long way to go ( nand has been available in some shape or form since the 90's)  and entire software ecosystems have to be redesignes to take advantage of it.  We'll probably see m. 2 optane drives in the coming years,  but mostly as faster SSD's or high speed cache.  We won't be seeing it as a replacement or complement to dram for at least a decade imo.  Plus,  m. 2 is relatively slow. 

[Dash Lambda]

God I wish they didn't decide the T4x0s line was just the new X1 Carbon...

It was perfect, then they started going crazy over thickness.

 

I'll be looking at the T470, but if I can't get that without the dGPU, then... Well, I guess the X270?

I really loved the T series...

Damnit...

 

EDIT: Not that I'm desperate to upgrade, just looking at my options, and I'm dismayed that they're dwindling.

[potoooooooo]

17 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

God I wish they didn't decide the T4x0s line was just the new X1 Carbon...

It was perfect, then they started going crazy over thickness.

 

I'll be looking at the T470, but if I can't get that without the dGPU, then... Well, I guess the X270?

I really loved the T series...

Damnit...

 

EDIT: Not that I'm desperate to upgrade, just looking at my options, and I'm dismayed that they're dwindling.

The S is for slim...going crazy over thickness is kinda the point

[Dash Lambda]

5 minutes ago, potoooooooo said:

The S is for slim... Going crazy over thickness is kinda the point.

I'm not sure that's explicitly what the "S" means, it's used a lot to mean 'enhanced' or some other general 'this is better' thing.

The T4x0s line has always been thinner and lighter than the other T-series machines, but now they're crippling it in the name of thickness. They have an ultra-thin notebook, and they have mobile workstations, but they're progressively pushing all the stuff in the middle over to either side. The T-series was fantastic and well-balanced, but now it's not.

 

The fact that they're offering the T470s in silver says a lot. It's no longer a business machine, form is starting to become more important than function. It's for consumers.

[potoooooooo]

3 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

I'm not sure that's explicitly what the "S" means, it's used a lot to mean 'enhanced' or some other general 'this is better' thing.

The T4x0s line has always been thinner and lighter than the other T-series machines, but now they're crippling it in the name of thickness. They have an ultra-thin notebook, and they have mobile workstations, but they're progressively pushing all the stuff in the middle over to either side. The T-series was fantastic and well-balanced, but now it's not.

 

The fact that they're offering the T470s in silver says a lot. It's no longer a business machine, form is starting to become more important than function. It's for consumers.

The S has always meant slim. Since the IBM days with the X60 an X60s, which was like 10+ years ago

 

Also i don't see how they're crippling it, it still has a ton of ports including ethernet, and afaik the only two things it's really missing are the dedicated GPU (940mx, basically worthless) and mildly less ram (8gb soldered + 1 dimm for up to 24gb vs 2 dimms for 32gb max).

[patrickjp93]

5 minutes ago, potoooooooo said:

The S has always meant slim. Since the IBM days with the X60 an X60s, which was like 10+ years ago

 

Also i don't see how they're crippling it, it still has a ton of ports including ethernet, and afaik the only two things it's really missing are the dedicated GPU (940mx, basically worthless) and mildly less ram (8gb soldered + 1 dimm for up to 24gb vs 2 dimms for 32gb max).

Pfff, Ethernet... Fiber ports should be standard in laptops by now. At a minimum Thunderbolt...

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Pfff, Ethernet... Fiber ports should be standard in laptops by now. At a minimum Thunderbolt...

What on earth do you need a fibre port in a laptop for? I'd settle for NBase-T (2.5G/5G) or 10GBase-T. Thunderbolt yea cool but no thanks not for ethernet, dongles on a business laptop for me is an utter sin. I've also never seen a thunderbolt port on a Netapp and it's never going to happen .

[patrickjp93]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What on earth do you need a fibre port in a laptop for? I'd settle for NBase-T (2.5G/5G) or 10GBase-T. Thunderbolt yea cool but no thanks not for ethernet, dongles on a business laptop for me is an utter sin. I've also never seen a thunderbolt port on a Netapp and it's never going to happen .

We have them in my office, so I don't know what's wrong in your part of the world. The Aussies get it.

[leadeater]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

We have them in my office, so I don't know what's wrong in your part of the world. The Aussies get it.

Have what? Fibre on laptops? Thunderbolt dongles on MacBook Pro "Business laptops", lol. Or Thunderbolt on an enterprise storage array.

 

I'd be very interest to see a laptop with a fibre port, I mean that is cool but pointless for most people. We can leave the Mac thing along since that's personal opinion and taste. Last one, yea no not ever.

 

I mean there are actually many technical reasons why dongles are rubbish for business use, especially Ethernet dongles. Ever had to prepare 150 Mac laptops using JAMF Casper or DeployStudio, if you haven't then you'll NEVER fully grasp the pain until you do.

[patrickjp93]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Have what? Fibre on laptops? Thunderbolt dongles on MacBook Pro "Business laptops", lol. Or Thunderbolt on an enterprise storage array.

 

I'd be very interest to see a laptop with a fibre port, I mean that is cool but pointless for most people. We can leave the Mac thing along since that's personal opinion and taste. Last one, yea no not ever.

 

I mean there are actually many technical reasons why dongles are rubbish for business use, especially Ethernet dongles. Ever had to prepare 150 Mac laptops using JAMF Casper or DeployStudio, if you haven't then you'll NEVER fully grasp the pain until you do.

Thunderbolt port access into our network, which would include the SAN.

 

That's only painful if you have to personally unpack them all. Bulk purchase can remove much of that pain.

[leadeater]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

Thunderbolt port access into our network, which would include the SAN.

 

That's only painful if you have to personally unpack them all. Bulk purchase can remove much of that pain.

What do you use for the network thunderbolt access? Peaked my interest with that one.

 

No that's not the issue. The issue is the MAC Address is tied to the dongle. When you prepare a laptop for imaging you identify it by MAC Address, then you network boot it and it gets the OS installed and named correctly. Wrong dongle wrong OS name, RIP. Keep in mind this is only a very quick summary of the process for enterprise imaging of devices. When I said there are technical issues I meant it, been in this game for a very long time and this happens to be one of my specialty areas.

 

Everything has to be barcoded, added in to an asset register database, MAC Address reserved DHCP (trusted only) blah blah, the user documentation for the general people that do the imaging is multiple pages. The documentation on the full systems is way longer.

[patrickjp93]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What do you use for the network thunderbolt access? Peaked my interest with that one.

 

No that's not the issue. The issue is the MAC Address is tied to the dongle. When you prepare a laptop for imaging you identify it by MAC Address, then you network boot it and it gets the OS installed and named correctly. Wrong dongle wrong OS name, RIP. Keep in mind this is only a very quick summary of the process for enterprise imaging of devices. When I said there are technical issues I meant it, been in this game for a very long time and this happens to be one of my specialty areas.

 

Everything has to be barcoded, added in to an asset register database, MAC Address reserved DHCP (trusted only) blah blah, the user documentation for the general people that do the imaging is multiple pages. The documentation on the full systems is way longer.

Both laptops and NYSE dumb terminals.

 

You can buy MAC-free dongles that just take their MACs from the machine.