Intel not so big on Optane, your thoughts on accelerated hard drives?

[Fasauceome]

I spotted this article:

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3069490/intel-will-end-core-cpu-and-optane-memory-bundles

Which used the term "bin" in the title and I thought first about a new SKU but realized they meant "thrown away" rather than "sorted"

 

So then I got a little curious, how do you all feel about accelerated storage? The advantage StoreMI has over optane is that it doesn't have to be "thrown out" since it's software, and can always be available in the background. I generally feel like Optane was almost a good idea in theory, but who was it really for? SSDs are so cheap now, even bargain bin models are way better than a hard drive for everyday use, and most any system should have an SSD in it no matter what, especially over a hard drive with SSD acceleration. 

[Jurrunio]

I guess Optane with 3TB+ drives can be useful? When you have a big drive but use 20GB of it significantly more than anything else for example.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

I guess Optane with 3TB+ drives can be useful? When you have a big drive but use 20GB of it significantly more than anything else for example.

Good in theory, but then if someone wanted a system with a hard drive that expensive they are probably also willing to shell out enough for a boot SSD that would have enough space to accommodate that 20GB for unlimited high speed access.

 

Alternatively, how does Optane service datacenters, if at all?

[Enderman]

10 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

I guess Optane with 3TB+ drives can be useful? When you have a big drive but use 20GB of it significantly more than anything else for example.

You can literally spend the same amount of money on an SSD and get 8 times the storage space.

[Brooksie359]

9 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Good in theory, but then if someone wanted a system with a hard drive that expensive they are probably also willing to shell out enough for a boot SSD that would have enough space to accommodate that 20GB for unlimited high speed access.

 

Alternatively, how does Optane service datacenters, if at all?

They buy the really large form factor that goes in a pcie slot. They have larger capacity. 

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

They buy the really large form factor that goes in a pcie slot. They have larger capacity. 

You mean the ruler? I don't believe that's Optane though, I remember Intel setting a data density record with that but it was pure SSD storage.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

Alternatively, how does Optane service datacenters, if at all?

I could see Optane having a fair bit of use in datacenters, I doubt those are all-SSD.

I think if Optane came in higher capacities instead of staying under the 64GB range, it might have seen more use and sales.

 

The one thing I don't agree with in your OP is this:

7 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

most any system should have an SSD in it no matter what

When planning budget builds over in New Builds, I will always recommend a 1-2TB HDD if a user is on a tighter budget, as any SSD in that price range isn't worth getting, as those will only be 120-275GB and impractical for most of the gaming rigs I see. Just my two cents.

 

Optane is still a decent technology in my opinion, it's a shame that a consumer would have to shell out for it, though. You'd need at least a 200-series board with a 7th gen CPU or newer just to be able to support Optane in the first place. That alone(plus DDR4) is gonna be pricey, and I haven't even gotten to the rest of the system, let alone the Optane drive in and of itself.

 

StoreMI still exists, and allows you to use pretty much any SSD and works with AM4, which is better and cheaper than Intel's offerings. I would argue that StoreMI makes more sense than Optane, due to being able to utilize a larger cache(up to 512GB), as well as Ryzen being cheaper overall. I'd imagine StoreMI is also available on AMD's server sockets so it could also be used in datacenters.

[Radium_Angel]

21 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

I generally feel like Optane was almost a good idea in theory,

I'm not certain that the restrictions on Optane were technological in nature (could be wrong...willing to admit this) because I feel accelerated storage could have had a big boost on older hardware, but by imposing the Skylake or better (IIRC it was Skylake...again, could be wrong) it limited the adoption because modern systems all had solid state storage to begin with.

 

Too bad really, I was looking forward to trying out Optane on an older build to see what it could have done.

I think Optane will ultimate be mentioned in the same company as RAMBUS memory. Good idea, bad execution and overpriced. 

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

I'm not certain that the restrictions on Optane were technological in nature

Partially, probably yes, because a BIOS update would have to have been made for older systems for it to be compatible, but the existence and ease of use of StoreMI makes me feel like this would not have been so hard, especially because motherboards like Z87 even have received fresh BIOS updates last I remember.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

by imposing the Skylake or better (IIRC it was Skylake...again, could be wrong)

Kaby Lake or better, 6700K has Optane support listed as negative on Ark:

https://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-20-GHz-

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Kaby Lake or better, 6700K has Optane support listed as negative on Ark:

https://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-20-GHz-

Thank you for the correction. I also seem to recall reading about someone online who got Optane to work on an AMD system...

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I also seem to recall reading about someone online who got Optane to work on an AMD system...

That doesn't entirely surprise me, I'd imagine there was a lot of BIOS modding involved, similar to getting Coffee Lake working on Z170/270 boards.

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Good in theory, but then if someone wanted a system with a hard drive that expensive they are probably also willing to shell out enough for a boot SSD that would have enough space to accommodate that 20GB for unlimited high speed access.

 

Alternatively, how does Optane service datacenters, if at all?

Like any caching system, it depends on what data is being constantly accessed. For example if there's a hot new item that everyone wants from Amazon, the caching system will push the data for that item up to faster memory so people can find it quicker.

 

I suppose Optane or any other hard drive caching system would be useful for people who can't be bothered to manually putting things on the faster storage or not.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Mira Yurizaki said:

Like any caching system, it depends on what data is being constantly accessed. For example if there's a hot new item that everyone wants from Amazon, the caching system will push the data for that item up to faster memory so people can find it quicker.

 

I suppose Optane or any other hard drive caching system would be useful for people who can't be bothered to manually putting things on the faster storage or not.

On the face of it that seems very practical, however I also wonder if they have servers that run SSDs instead of HDDs for that very purpose, as opposed to a single caching mechanism for each individual server unit, which likely would have been implemented prior since Optane is rather new compared to SSDs (but then I don't really know enough about datacenters to know how much more practical either would be over the other)

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

On the face of it that seems very practical, however I also wonder if they have servers that run SSDs instead of HDDs for that very purpose, as opposed to a single caching mechanism for each individual server unit, which likely would have been implemented prior since Optane is rather new compared to SSDs (but then I don't really know enough about datacenters to know how much more practical either would be over the other)

Like any other performance issue, it depends on where the bottleneck is and characterizing it. If most of the queries are hitting like 10GB of data, then you could just get another 16GB of RAM for your server and just cache things in RAM.

[Jurrunio]

30 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You can literally spend the same amount of money on an SSD and get 8 times the storage space.

CPU or board bundle with Optane can be cheap ways to get 16GB Optane before

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

CPU or board bundle with Optane can be cheap ways to get 16GB Optane before

Which I would have thought to be a big draw, but like the article says, nobody's buying apparently.

[nosirrahx]

I use Optane but in a way that that Intel does not support.

A super cheap 2TB SATA SSD paired with the 58GB 800P is cheaper than a 2TB NVMe SSD and faster in 4KQ1T1.

If you ask Intel about this kind of setup they tell you straight up not to do it, its not supported.

The main issue with this is that Intel would have been better off just building hybrid SSDs with both cheap NAND and Optane cache. They are finally doing this, we will have these drives in Q2 and they should be pretty great.

By then I don't think anyone will care though, too much time with people crapping on Optane.

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, nosirrahx said:

A super cheap 2TB SATA SSD paired with the 58GB 800P is cheaper than a 2TB NVMe SSD and faster in 4KQ1T1.
 

An interesting configuration for sure, what gains does it give you?

[nosirrahx]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

An interesting configuration for sure, what gains does it give you?

4KQ1T1 (small random file reads) is what your OS does most of the time and Optane is very good at this, far better than NAND.

This is my personal laptop, went higher end on the parts but you get the idea.

[Fasauceome]

4 minutes ago, nosirrahx said:

quite good numbers, Didn't know they'd be so high, hopefully Optane gets more successfully implemented later down the line.

[porina]

I think the main scenario for Optane as cache is for the less than tech smart buyer who uses PCs. I have friends in this category. They're just not going to learn tech and want something that works. The scenario I'm thinking of is a laptop with Optane module, and a 1TB HD. Yes, you could arguably get a SSD+HD for similar cash, but the Optane route means the user doesn't have to care about where things are saved. It's the same device. It should also easily beat SSHDs as the cache in those is too small to be useful.

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I think the main scenario for Optane as cache is for the less than tech smart buyer who uses PCs. I have friends in this category. They're just not going to learn tech and want something that works. The scenario I'm thinking of is a laptop with Optane module, and a 1TB HD. Yes, you could arguably get a SSD+HD for similar cash, but the Optane route means the user doesn't have to care about where things are saved. It's the same device. It should also easily beat SSHDs as the cache in those is too small to be useful.

Given that approach, do you think the core i+ bundles made any sense in the first place?

[nosirrahx]

Just now, fasauceome said:

quite good numbers, Didn't know they'd be so high, hopefully Optane gets more successfully implemented later down the line.

I think Intel hit the ground stumbling with a combination of terrible price, terrible capacity, annoying configuration and annoying form factor (U.2 and M.2 22110).

Had Intel simply waited for development to reach a point where they could offer AIO NAND + Optane SSDs I think they would have had a hit on their hands.

IMO Optane is a cool tech toy for geeks with $ and that is about it. For most people its just a major PITA.

BTW, I should also inform anyone reading this, reinstalling windows after a major crash on a system with Optane can be a huge headache, the Intel support forums are full of people seeking support with this exact problem. Getting Optane to work at all makes up a huge chunk of their support as well.

[porina]

7 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Given that approach, do you think the core i+ bundles made any sense in the first place?

Was there a saving getting them together? I never saw the bundles on offer where I am so to me they practically don't exist.

 

7 minutes ago, nosirrahx said:

I think Intel hit the ground stumbling with a combination of terrible price, terrible capacity, annoying configuration and annoying form factor (U.2 and M.2 22110).

Price and capacity are two sides of the same problem. Configuration wasn't difficult, no worse than setting up a raid. It wont be for everyone, and they didn't expect that. It targeted a performance niche.

 

As storage not cache, if you want random read performance, this is the only game in town. Nothing else short of a ram disk comes anywhere close, and that's going to cost you a lot more per capacity putting aside lots of other problems.

 

7 minutes ago, nosirrahx said:

IMO Optane is a cool tech toy for geeks with $ and that is about it. For most people its just a major PITA.

You're over thinking it. It is no more difficult to use than any other drive.

 

BTW I have Optane devices in the system I'm typing this reply on.