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  • nathanddrews - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Is there any indication that performance would degrade with a lesser CPU or improve with a faster CPU? Just curious if we should expect CPU bottlenecks from these hyper-speed SSDs.
  • Billy Tallis - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Yes, CPU speed can definitely affect latency and consistency and maximum achievable IOPS. Some of those limits were hit with the P4800X testing on a server with lower per-core performance than this consumer testbed.

    At the moment, my inclination is to leave the consumer test suite single-threaded, because consumer workloads don't actually hit the queue depths necessary to go beyond the I/O capabilities of a single CPU core. I don't care too much if the high QD range on some of the graphs doesn't quite reach the theoretical limit of the drive, because that's not the part of the graph we should be paying attention to. (For consumer drives.)

    At low queue depths, interrupt servicing latency can be helped a bit by a faster CPU. But for most consumers, switching from Windows to Linux will do a lot more to help reduce their storage latency. And saving a few more microseconds only matters on Optane; mainstream products won't be this fast for quite a while.
  • ddrіver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    I think I'll have to reevaluate my position on Optane. Seems like a solid product. Guess I misread the signs.
  • ddriver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    How can you tell a fake "ddriver" apart? Well, the real one would never mislabel the product hypetane ;)

    It is what it is, and still nowhere nearly "1000x" better as intel claimed. It has its niche strengths, but those offer no tangible benefit to 99.9999% of the consumers out there. I don't recall ever claiming that it will suck, my claim has always been that it will epically fail to live up to the hype, which testing thoroughly confirms. It is not even 10% of "1000x better". So hypetane it is.

    SLC flash can easily match and even bet it in most performance metrics. Unfortunately the industry is not even trying, even mlc is now considered "ultra high end enterprise". Which is understandable, as the workloads that could actually benefit from higher performance are very few and far in between, and for 99% of them using ram is the more applicable and still tremendously better performing solution.

    It is definitely not a bad product on its own. And I would not refer to it as "hypetane" if only intel hadn't shamelessly lied about it on such a preposterous scale.
  • tuxRoller - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Interface speeds≠ media speeds

    When will you learn?

    Also, still need a reference for those SLC numbers.
  • LordanSS - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Indeed, Interface speeds are not "media" speeds. I never expected it to work according to Intel's "1000x" claims, but was hoping for a more in-line 20x better from what we currently have, considering first generation product and all.

    And it doesn't even do that. Sorry, for this one time, I am (partially) siding with ddriver.
  • lmcd - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    20X better overall is entirely unrealistic. Certain attributes are 20X better. That is all you can really expect when so many things (form factor, power usage, interface protocols, physical interface, etc) are retained from the previous generation.
  • LordanSS - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    20x is 2% (TWO PERCENT) of what Intel claimed when they disclosed XPoint. It's not realistic?

    Intel shoul have kept their mouth shut back then, just like Micron has done so until now. If they can't even do 2% of what they claimed, they're the unrealistic ones.
  • tuxRoller - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    Were those claims that Intel made in reference to xpoint the tech, or optane the first gen product?
  • tuxRoller - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    I'm not sure why you are quoting media, but you are absolutely welcome to be disappointed.
    You'll notice I don't care whether anyone thinks Intel over hyped their product only that we still don't know what the actual xpoint (the media, or "tread + xfer + Misc" times, as Handy refers to it) response times look like.
    If AT doesn't allow the below link, search for "xpoint presence in slow lane explained" on the register, or Google "Why XPoint SSDs won't meet original speed claims: A guide"

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/29/xpoint_pr...
  • eddman - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    That graph explains the situation perfectly. Even if the media's latency was somehow magically reduced to zero, the total storage latency would still be only about 6 times better.

    It's all pointless though; ddriver's personal hatred towards intel and "the corporations" prevents him from thinking differently. As soon as he finds a number that is different from what was mentioned in the promotional materials, the first thing he does is to start shouting "liar, liar".

    P.S. I have zero love for corporations and can't stand when one takes advantage of the users. What I also can't stand is a person spreading unsubstantiated claims and spamming a technology website's comment section to offload his hate in order to feel better.
  • tuxRoller - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Also z nand appears to be mlc cells operating in SLC mode, and that's still slower than first gen xpoint.
  • hescominsoon - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Intel has walked back the 100x bs claims. Also notice how micro(their partner in this venture) has NOT released their side of this product?
    https://semiaccurate.com/?s=optane
  • tuxRoller - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    They walked them back? Maybe for these nvme products, though I've not seen anything about that. The real test is how well they'll do as direct addressed memory when used in the DIMM configuration.
  • Reflex - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    SLC has no significant advantages over Optane. Optane is nearly across the board a better performer, often by a significant margin, than any commercial NAND technology. The two drawbacks that are important right now are power consumption and cost (these are also drawbacks of SLC for the record)

    The complaints about Intel's 'hype' are misconstrued. There is a huge difference between discussing what a technology is capable of, and what individual products derived from that technology can deliver. That some people had reading comprehension problems is not Intel's problem, they are delivering what they promised, and as the rest of the supporting infrastructure improves over time we know based on their initial statements that Optane/PCM can scale to match it.
  • CheapSushi - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    The industry is trying. It's called Z-NAND.
  • ddriver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Which is MLC...

    Samsung realized nobody is catching up in the nand market and decided to push consumer, high end and mainstream enterprise a notch down to TLC.

    So now that MLC is only a "high end enterprise" thing in their portfolio, they decided to pimp it up with a new moniker - z-nand. Alas, it is just good old MLC with a barely incremental controller. And claim that it has anything to do with SLC performance - which it does as much as an a race horse harness makes an old donkey faster.

    They REALLY aren't trying.
  • CheapSushi - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    It's MLC & TLC 3D NAND treated exactly like SLC (1 bit per cell) with a better controller and special sauce, effectively making it as if it was SLC in the first place and a better SLC driver than previous SLC drives that came out. So what is the issue? It's not a completely separate NAND production line?
  • ddriver - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Do you realize parroting nonsense you are clearly completely ignorant of doesn't win you bonus points?

    There is no such thing, you have to compromise one for the sake of the other. It is just more mature and a tiny bit better than previous gen MLC, but it is not even half of what can be squeezed of contemporary SLC.

    "Special sauce"? It is sad to see average Joe hans't moved up a bit since the middle ages.
  • drajitshnew - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    No "ryzen" in opposition to their "core". The flash industry is in a race to see who can make the CHEAPEST PoS
  • ddriver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Which is MLC...

    Samsung realized nobody is catching up in the nand market and decided to push consumer, high end and mainstream enterprise a notch down to TLC.

    So now that MLC is only a "high end enterprise" thing in their portfolio, they decided to pimp it up with a new moniker - z-nand. Alas, it is just good old MLC with a barely incremental controller. And claim that it has anything to do with SLC performance - which it does as much as an a race horse harness makes an old donkey faster.

    They REALLY aren't trying.
  • mapesdhs - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link

    Do you have a link to Intel's original PR articlea about this tech? Other people keep saying you're wrong, but if there is indeed a piece of Intel PR that at least implied an initial launch would provide the sort of speed gains you mention, then you absolutely have a point.
  • jospoortvliet - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link

    I have no link, but as pointed out below, there is a fight with a strawman going on here. Intel certainly talked about 1000x improvement in latency of flash vs Optane - at that point they are talking about time it takes for a single flash cell vs an Optane cell. As Flash can only write to a block or more, it is far far slower, optane can address a single cell directly. And sure, that might very well be 1000x faster in theory - and even already in this very first Optane SSD.

    But, just like if you make one component (eg a piston) in a car engine 1000x faster the entire car won't drive 1000x faster - the other components also contribute to speed, as do external factors like, you know, wind, asphalt... So the car gets 10% faster as a whole. You see the same here: even if that one part is 1000x faster, flash controllers use a ram cache and splitting data over a dozen channels to overcome the inherent limitation of flash while the NVME protocol and PCIExpress puts limits at latency improvements, so the end result is that the Optane PCIE devices are occasionally >10x faster than SSD's but generally a factor 3-5.

    Of course, if you put them in a DDR4 slot, they'll be unleashed a bit more and would beat a DDR4 SSD solution probably by a factor 30-50 in most cases with peaks of 100x. Still not 1000 and it'll never be...

    So, in short, even if Intel is 100% correct and an individual cell responds 1000x faster, its response has to be mediated by the controller, go over a data bus etc etc. so you'll never measure it like that.
  • jospoortvliet - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link

    And of course Intel just screams '1000x faster response time' without very clearly identifying they're talking about a theoretical maximum. Well, it is marketing. You take the best looking numbers that are defensible and use them.
  • eddman - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link

    No, intel claimed it for 3D xpoint, NOT optane. Xpoint is the name of the tech, optane is the storage devices based on the tech.
  • Kidster3001 - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link

    Intel never claimed Optane to be 1000x faster than anything. The 1000x faster was in reference to 3D-XPoint. XPoint = the memory cells; Optane = the SSD product line. Two completely different things.
  • ddrіver - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    I'm not myself when I drink.
  • farazgomot - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    I fully agree, why almost everybody is caustic to ddriver when he correctly is critic to only the marketing hype , not that the product is in any way bad ( except for the high price/ capacity)
  • lmcd - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    He's arguing semantics when ridiculous performance claims are an industry norm. He's argued those semantics for 5 straight articles, and arguing with literally every comment he can find this very point. It's in the ballpark of 100 belligerent comments on 5 articles, which frankly is far closer to "caustic" than our collective treatment. It's fine if he states his opinion, but we're tired of being screamed at.
  • Reflex - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    The problem with ddriver is that he is arguing against a strawman that was built up in his own mind. Optane was never promised to produce products that could deliver 1000x performance boosts in the first generation. PCM is itself as much as 1000x faster than traditional NAND for many operations while being orders of magnitude more durable.

    However the fact that you are using Optane/PCM does not in some way fix the fact that controllers aren't capable of that kind of performance yet, that PCIe bandwidth is way behind that level, that system memory, chipsets and CPU's couldn't keep up with that, that the software stack is not optimized for that, etc etc.

    Intel delivered, mostly on time and for a cheaper price than is typical for a first gen of a new technology. Since they have previously stated what the performance capabilities of Optane/PCM are, the focus now will be on other aspects of the platform in order to enable that capability. This removes a major performance roadblock as they move towards an optical bus and optical chips, and ensures that system storage is not the long pole.

    I'm fairly excited, its been ten years since any major change in storage has occurred and now it is finally here. And its reasonably priced for what it delivers from the get go.
  • Notmyusualid - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    So, when you are at gun point, in a corner, you finally concede defeat?

    I think you need professional help.
  • tuxRoller - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    If you are staying with a single thread submission model Windows may we'll have a decent sized advantage with both iocp and rio. Linux kernel aio is just such a crap shoot that it's really only useful if you run big databases and you set it up properly.
  • IntelUser2000 - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    "Lower power consumption will require serious performance compromises.

    Don't hold your breath for a M.2 version of the 900p, or anything with performance close to the 900p. Future Optane products will require different controllers in order to offer significantly different performance characteristics"

    Not necessarily. Optane Memory devices show the random performance is on par with the 900P. It's the sequential throughput that limits top-end performance.

    While its plausible the load power consumption might be impacted by performance, not always true for idle. The power consumption in idle can be cut significantly(to 10's of mW levels) by using a new controller. It's reasonable to assume the 900P uses the controller derived from the 750, which is also power hungry.
  • p1esk - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Wait, I don't get it: the operation is much simpler than flash (no garbage collection, no caching, etc), so the controller should be simpler. Then why does it consume more power?
  • IntelUser2000 - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    You are still confusing load power consumption with idle power consumption. What you said makes sense for load, when its active. Not for idle.

    Optane Memory devices having 1/3rd the idle power demonstrates its due to the controller. They likely wanted something with short TTM, so they chose whatever controller they had and retrofitted it.
  • rahvin - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Optane's very nature as a heat based phase change material is always going to result in higher power use than NAND because it's always going to take more energy to heat a material up than it would to create a magnetic or electric field.
  • tuxRoller - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    That same nature also means that it will require less energy per reset as the process node shrinks (roughly e~1/F).
    In general, pcm is a much more amenable to process scaling than nand.
  • CheapSushi - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Keep in mind a big part of the sequential throughput limit is the fact that the Optane M.2s are x2 PCIe lanes. This AIC is x4. Most NAND M.2 sticks are x4 as well.
  • twotwotwo - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    I'm curious whether it's possible to get more IOPS doing random 512B reads, since that's the sector size this advertises.

    When the description of the memory tech itself came out, bit addressability--not having to read any minimum block size--was a selling point. But it may be that the controller isn't actually capable of reading any more 512B blocks/s than 4KB ones, even if the memory and the bus could handle it.

    I don't think any additional IOPS you get from smaller reads would help most existing apps, but if you were, say, writing a database you wanted to run well on this stuff, it'd be interesting to know that small reads help.
  • tuxRoller - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Those latencies seem pretty high. Was this with Linux or Windows? The table on page one indicates both were used.
    Can you run a few of these tests against a loop mounted ram block device? I'm curious to see what both the min, average and standard deviation values of latency look like when the block layer is involved.
  • Billy Tallis - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    The ATSB tests are Windows-based, and the synthetic tests are on Linux with fio. I can't really create a RAM disk large enough to properly run the ATSB tests (at least not on this system), but I'll look into running the synthetic tests against a RAM disk.
  • tuxRoller - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Thanks so much for the response and clarification.
    I'll keep an eye out for that ramdisk comparison:)
  • Chaser - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    In other words, if you are the enthusiast gamer person like many of the people that read this site, you're throwing money away buying this for your gaming system.
  • jabber - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    You are pretty much throwing away money investing in anything faster than a 850EVO in a gaming rig.
  • eek2121 - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    Not really, as a gamer, you should not only be looking at performance, but at reliability as well. Ironically I say this NOT because the 8xx EVO is crap (my 840 evo still has 93% life left and that's despite being used as a system drive for many years), but because my 960 evo has had a metric ton of degradation in the 6 months I've owned it.
  • Klimax - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    Only if one has few games. There's better solution: 16GB of RAM + large regular HDD (WD Black and similar, their sequential reads are very good). Only initial load will be noticeable. (Anytime after that, caching will take care of that)
  • CheapSushi - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Umm, what? Optane would be the better drive in every single way for OS and general usage. If you were going to get ONE main drive, it should be Optane.
  • ddriver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    Sure, but is 0.01% faster in real world performance worth being 300$ more expensive? If you are going with one main drive, you better get better capacity than performance you can't make any use of.
  • tricomp - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Here is what Tom wrote about Optane OS drive : "You will see and feel a performance benefit just by using the Optane SSD 900P as your operating system drive. The feel of the system changes even if you’re replacing a high-performance NVMe SSD. You will notice the increased responsiveness immediately and then gradually become accustomed to it. In our experience, you will take the performance for granted until you work on a slower PC. Then you'll wish it had an Optane SSD." Its main advantage - 4K read performance - makes it OS king
  • eek2121 - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    "Tom" has been gone for a long time. Tom's hardware, much like AnandTech, has simply become a vehicle for Purch Ads (sadly). The AnandTech or Tom's Hardware of today have absolutely nothing to do with the original founders/sites. I don't mean to sound anti-corporate (because I'm not), but Purch has allowed pretty much all of their sites to degrade to the point where they have become irrelevant. I mean no disrespect to any AT folks either. I'm sure they bust their asses off. However, IMO, Purch has taken some very valuable brands and driven them into the ground in a desperate reach for revenue.
  • thestryker - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    I'm curious if the power consumption on the u.2 version would be any different.

    Any chances of Intel hooking AnandTech up with a u.2 version? I know the storage bench system doesn't have u.2, but I'm sure there's a system around which does. I believe there's also a sku with m.2 to u.2 adapter also.
  • Billy Tallis - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    The U.2 drive uses the same 12V supply as the add-in card, unlike SATA SSDs that use 5V. Any differences in power consumption would probably be minor variations due to different operating temperature.
  • CheapSushi - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link

    It's been so satisfying to see all the Optane haters, dismissers, general naysayers and "meh, ___ is good enuff" crowd, who pretend to be enthusiasts, finally backtracking on their comments about it. Good times.
  • tricomp - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Can't wait seeing my customer's jaws dropping... I build heavy multi-core workstations for 3D and post production. Using 480 jet like this for the OS is something they will truly appreciate
  • mapesdhs - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link

    Responsiveness, etc. with pro apps wasn't tested here. Where's the evidence it would be any better than a 960 Pro? I'd be more interested in a Puget Systems review with real world situations.
  • tricomp - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link

    I agree with mapesdhs. The main strength of this unit should be tested and compared, not to mention - mentioned - in an article called "deeper diving into 3D Xpoint"
  • lilmoe - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Pardon the ignorance, but is can XPoint memory packages run on lower voltages, or is operation dependent on a single constant voltage setting? Are there any plans for low-power based XPoint like LPDDR or DDRL? If so, I wonder how much performance and latency would degrade.

    As it is, these will never be able to compete with NAND in terms of power. Lots of users (like) me want this kind of power on the go. Samsung and others are simply NOT trying anymore. I've REALLY delayed purchasing a mobile workstation till these technologies get sorted out and it's clear for me what type of expansion I'll need for compatibility.
  • wanderer66 - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    There won't be mainstream memory modules until late next year, based on what I've read. I wouldn't count on seeing mobile workstation/laptop capability until 2019 or 2020, and that depends on several things: 2nd or 3rd gen optane modules using less power (due to die shrinkage), and a reference design from Intel that supports them on that kind of motherboard. Even then count on them consuming 10-15 watts for a loaded configuration.
  • wanderer66 - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link

    Two things: This is first gen Optane architecture. *First Gen* sisters and brothers... In the next several years, performance will evolve as the controllers improve (greater parallelism and other performance tweaks), power usage will decrease as process optimization and die shrinkage improves, and the design moves beyond being able to use NVMe as the interface, which it will.

    Second, 550k iops. That's mind-blowing, really. This may not be hugely important to single-user workstations, but in the hosting/cloud markets, this is one of the largest leaps that can be made..

    In five years time, Optane will be to flash SSDs what flash SSDs are to HDDs today.
  • djayjp - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link

    Would *really* like to see real world testing, not traces. In such tests no difference is ever apparent between the bargain basement SSDs and the absolute top tier, thus the current tests AT uses are nonsense.
  • Nottheface - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link

    So are the origins of xpoint memory here as claimed:
    "Bronek Kozicki
    Silver badge
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    Holmes
    one last point
    There's been so much speculation about what XPoint actually is. Well, it might be Cross-Point memory, pretty well documented few years ago - here . Unity Semiductor where this research has been conducted was acquired by Rambus in 2012 and, one year later, Micron and Rambus signed agreement giving Micron access to all Rambus patents (which would include Cross-Point IP), details here. The wording used ("... granted to Micron and its subsidiaries") would also explain why XPoint venture is majority-owned by Micron."

    From:
    https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/04/1...
  • Nottheface - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link

    So from this:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20121117195338/http://...
  • emvonline - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link

    NOT: XPoint is the same memory Micron and Intel were working on 10 years ago. Unity/rambus work is not at all relatedl. Side note: Intel owns the Name X point and licenses it to Micron. Intel owns the IP jointly with Micron.
  • emvonline - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link

    Real world numbers:
    I looked at a different website and the numbers showed large impacts on benchmarks. But if you look at actual gaming service times, boot times, or load times, Optane is faster but not noticeably faster (<10% difference). Could I easily tell the difference between this and other NVMe SSDs when gaming?
  • djayjp - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link

    Nope.
  • djayjp - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link

    You wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between this and the budget sata SSDs
  • emvonline - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link

    I agree... would love to get Anandtech to agree publicly
  • albert89 - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link

    Intel have given me more reasons why their optane series is nothing more then a price gouge.
    And non of the paid up Intel fangirls like Jays2cents, Linus Gordon from PCworld, TomsHradware etc, are going to convince me otherwise.
  • Chaser - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link

    Tomshardware paints a completely different picture on rather unique user experience these drives provide gamers and enthusiasts.

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