A legitimate use case for Optane factoring in both price and performance.

[nosirrahx]

Even though I am an Optane fan I do concede that for the most part Optane is somewhere between an inefficient use of $ and a tech demo really only suitable for enthusiasts.

That said, there does actually seem to be a specific use case where Optane is the right choice in terms of both price and performance.

If you are about to build a new system and the SSD that best suites your needs is a 2TB 970 EVO/Pro then you can save some $ (more than 100$) and get much better 4KQ1T1 performance by combining a 2TB 860 EVO and a 58GB 800P. Optane cache also seems to be doing something similar to Samsung Rapid Mode and AMD StoreMI driving sequential read speed way up. My travel laptop has a very similar configuration and this is how it performs:

Keep in mind that you will need to very carefully research laptops if you want to replicate this as very few gen 8 laptops support both SATA and NVMe at the same time. 8th gen Desktops on the other hand should all support this configuration.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This thread caught my interest, as I was looking at a Gigabyte Brix unit with an 8250U CPU. 4C/8T, 3.4Ghz turbo, takes both an M.2 and a 2.5" SATA. Was thinking of options for storage. Have a BNIB SX6000 A data 512GB drive. Don't have any huge SATA SSDs, But Newegg has a Silicon Power A55 1TB SSD for $160.

Edit: I priced it out. 1TB 860 EVO SATA for $200, 32GB Optane M.2 for $60. Versus 970 EVO M.2 1TB for $350.

 

[nosirrahx]

Edit: I priced it out. 1TB 860 EVO SATA for $200, 32GB Optane M.2 for $60. Versus 970 EVO M.2 1TB for $350.

This would be a solid setup. You get killer speed where it counts for OS and on the rare cases where you fall back to non-cache scenarios you get SATA SSD speed, which is of course also pretty decent.

It is kind of baffling to me that Optane + SATA SSD as a competitor for NVMe SSD isn't being promoted at all and in fact if you read the reviews they are actively advised against such configurations.

Its really hard to even find SATA SSD + Optane reviews. Intel is trying way too hard to sell Optane through their original vision even though that use case kind of sucks.

 

[whm1974]

I'm well aware that Optane is early technology but i think Intel could do far more with it putting efforts into increasing the capacity and lowering cost and offering such devices as SSDs for high end consumers instead of this tiered caching solution or in DIMMs.

Yes, I see Optane has having great promise as a faster and cheaper Flash replacement for large SSDs.

 

[nosirrahx]

I'm well aware that Optane is early technology but i think Intel could do far more with it putting efforts into increasing the capacity and lowering cost and offering such devices as SSDs for high end consumers instead of this tiered caching solution or in DIMMs.

The issue with their caching solution is the hoops you have to jump through to use it. The actual theory behind it is very solid, accelerate what you need to be fast and let the lower cost storage handle the rest.

What Intel should do is work on an AIO solution for Optane SSDs where they pair a decent sized Optane cache (maybe 128-256GB) with a much larger low cost NAND solution. You get a lot of benefits from this:

1. AIO means from the outside looking in its just a NVMe drive and can work on any platform supporting NVMe.
2. The NAND part could be made to be modular so the device itself could be upgraded.
3. With Optane cache instead of DRAM cache (like most SSDs) you can survive a power failure during heavy writes and not lose data in the cache waiting to be written.

As far as a 100% Optane drive that is 4TB or higher, that price point is going to be far out of reach for many many years to come and wont ever catch the Optane + NAND price point.

I would not be surprised at all if Samsung comes out with a AIO product leveraging their coming Optane like technology and their existing NAND technology. The huge challenge will be creating this product within the M.2 2280 form factor. Intel is struggling to fit anything close to usable capacity into 2280.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Yes, I see Optane has having great promise as a faster and cheaper Flash replacement for large SSDs.

I disagree. Only the caching and DIMMs make sense overall. SSDs need certain capacities which drive absolute cost to be too high, and its limited by the interface. DIMMs are going to be pricey, but you have the absolute best performance, and a unique usage scenario of being a persistent system memory, which is the real future. Caching is cheap enough in absolute costs to make it viable for most consumers.*

The SSDs might make sense for guys like nosirrahx with lots to spend on storage, but volume doesn't exist for Intel. Optane SSDs are really a stepping stone to DIMMs. Improving yields require volume, lowering costs require volume, and improving the technology needs volume.

Intel will also have a hard time competing if the low latency NAND drive competitors(like Z-NAND, or the XL from Toshiba) arrive, as they will take advantage of the already existing NAND(R&D, Fabs) ecosystem and inherent density advantages keep the costs significantly lower than Optane SSDs. Some are saying the costs of producing Optane SSDs are so high that they don't make much money from the 905P SSD!

Again, that's no problem with DIMMs, as it'll be fully unleashed and it'll be in another league from NAND.

*It should be pointed out HDDs still have the largest portion of the market. It's no joke to say consumer markets are price sensitive. Not only that, continued advancements in HDD technology allows it to keep its 10x GB/$ advantage in the forseeable future.

 

[whm1974]

I'm sure the prices on Optane as SSDs will come down as both both Intel and Micron work on the technology. Of course NAND Flash isn't standing still either.

The really big issue here at present is that only consumers with high uses such as 4K video editing and rendering or really heavy graphics render really benefit from NVMe. Most of us can and do make with SATA SSDs for the moment.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Optane price will not come down fast enough to make it relevant for SSDs. This is firmly NAND territory. Just like HDDs have the GB/$ advantage that existed since the days before 3D NAND and Multi-level cell NAND, NAND will continue to have GB/$ advantage gap over Optane.

You don't need Optane for above said use cases, since its bandwidth limited and top NAND NVMe drives have plenty of that, even more than Optane.

One of the top guys working for Optane says the 2nd generation will optimize use of materials to further improve performance. Yea, they can go vertical stack and do 4-Hi, or even 8-Hi, but trying to be on par with NAND is an exercise in futility.

 

[arandomguy]

What I'm hoping is if they can add even more flexibility to the caching solution to allow 1 Optane drive to act as both a regular drive and a cache drive all other drives (or better specific other drives), even if this requires manual partitioning. For instance a 128GB Optane drive split into 96GB as the system drive for the OS, pagefile, and some specific applications. Than the remaining 32 GB serving as cache for your SATA SSDs or HDDs.

 

[IntelUser2000]

They keep it as simple as possible for one reason, and that's to keep troublesome users from messing over their own system.

This is why Android/iOS avoids majority of the problems Windows has. Nearly everything is off the controlled app stores, and administrative privileges require rooting, which needs significant technical knowledge.

If you live with someone, and they are not good with computers, messing them up all the time, make a password protected administrative account, and put strict UAC controls. Their problems are going to disappear.

 

[arandomguy]

But what I'm proposing is actually simpler. Right now, at least form what I understand, is you need to specify a drive to cache. It cannot cache every other singe drive in the system. This was actually a stepped improvement from before in which you could only cache the system drive. So at least they've improved the situation so now you can run a SSD as your system drive but use Optane to cache a slower HDD. We just need it to go 1 further and let it cache everything in your system.

 

[nosirrahx]

But what I'm proposing is actually simpler. Right now, at least form what I understand, is you need to specify a drive to cache. It cannot cache every other singe drive in the system. This was actually a stepped improvement from before in which you could only cache the system drive. So at least they've improved the situation so now you can run a SSD as your system drive but use Optane to cache a slower HDD. We just need it to go 1 further and let it cache everything in your system.

Having cache that accelerates everything would be cool but it would be a pain for novices to deal with. For novices it would be better to integrate a CPU connected universal storage cache directly into the motherboard.

What I want to see for the next for any caching technology is a new form of RAID that allows cache to work with reads instead of superseding them.

Lets say cache can grab 80% of a file in the time it takes the dedicated storage to grab 20% of that same file. Why not let both read from opposite ends of the file and collectively grab the file faster than either could on their own?