Intel at last announces Optane memory: DDR4 that never forgets

guest · May 31, 2018

Intel at last announces Optane memory: DDR4 that never forgets
New memory offers huge capacities and persistence, but fits in a DDR4 slot.
May 31, 2018
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...s-ddr4-memory-made-from-persistent-3d-xpoint/

3D XPoint blends the properties of flash storage and DRAM memory. Like flash, it's persistent, retaining its value even when systems are powered down, and it's dense, with about 10 times the density of DRAM. Like DRAM, it supports low latency random access. Intel also claimed that its write endurance is substantially better than that of flash.

Today, Intel announced Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory. This is a series of DDR4 memory sticks (with capacities of 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB) that use 3D XPoint instead of traditional DRAM cells. Result? The latency is a bit worse than real DDR 4, but the sticks are persistent. Although they use the standard DDR4 form factor, they'll only be supported on Intel's next-generation Xeon platform.
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Intel Launches Optane DIMMs Up To 512GB: Apache Pass Is Here!
May 30, 2018
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12828/intel-launches-optane-dimms-up-to-512gb-apache-pass-is-here

The new Optane DC Persistent Memory modules will be initially available in three capacities: 128GB, 256GB and 512GB per module. This implies that they are probably still based on the same 128Gb 3D XPoint memory dies used in all other Optane products so far. The modules are pin-compatible with standard DDR4 DIMMs and will be supported by the next generation of Intel's Xeon server platforms.
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mirimir · May 31, 2018

Isn't persistence rather iffy for cryptographic stuff?

JRViejo · Jun 15, 2018

Multiple PC OEMs are selling laptops outfitted with Intel Optane cache drives — but they’re improperly combining that information in ways that makes it seem as if the Optane cache drive represents some kind of DRAM rather than a conventional cache drive. Meanwhile, Intel has made explicit changes to its own Optane marketing FAQs that appear to greenlight this positioning. It’s a situation that could lead end-users who aren’t careful to draw very incorrect conclusions about what kind of system they are buying and what its capabilities are.
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PC OEMs Are Selling Laptops With Optane Cache Drives and Claiming It’s Memory by Joel Hruska.

Rasheed187 · Jun 16, 2018

Can someone explain what this Optane stuff is really good for, it's a bit confusing.

zapjb · Jun 16, 2018

Persistence? Like it's a good thing.

Also surveillance cameras in bathrooms in government buildings. Am I joking? For now maybe.

hawki · Jun 16, 2018

Rasheed187 said: ↑

Can someone explain what this Optane stuff is really good for, it's a bit confusing.
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I have read several credible test results demonstrating that a PC equipped with 16GB-32GB of Optane memory, along with a standard stack of RAM, and an HDD has read/load speeds much faster than a PC with an SSD. (Optane increases in PC speed with an SSD for the most part are barely noticeable, however.)

SnowWalker · Jun 16, 2018

hawki said: ↑

I have read several credible test results demonstrating that a PC equipped with 16GB-32GB of Optane memory, along with a standard stack of RAM, and an HDD has read/load speeds much faster than a PC with an SSD. (Optane increases in PC speed with an SSD for the most part are barely noticeable, however.)
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Still a little confusing for me. A PC with Optane, RAM, and an HDD is much faster than a PC with Optane, RAM, and an SSD?

mirimir · Jun 16, 2018

There are times when memory persistence is a good thing. Quality SSDs have capacitors to protect buffered data if there's a power interruption. And high-end RAID controllers have batteries, to retain array state during power failures.

But on the other hand, RAM persistence is a bad thing for LUKS encrypted machines

hawki · Jun 16, 2018

SnowWalker said: ↑

Still a little confusing for me. A PC with Optane, RAM, and an HDD is much faster than a PC with Optane, RAM, and an SSD?
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Thinking my memory (brain) was a little fuzzy. Should have said: 16GB-32GB Optane, RAM, and an HDD is as fast as to somewhat faster than an SSD (not:"much faster").

So a main advantage is that, with a motherboard that is Optane compliant, a 1 TB HDD can be transformed in speed to the equivalent of a 1TB SSD for approx. $40-$80 (the typical cost of upgrading a custom PC with 16GB-32GB Optane).

Rasheed187 · Jun 23, 2018

hawki said: ↑

I have read several credible test results demonstrating that a PC equipped with 16GB-32GB of Optane memory, along with a standard stack of RAM, and an HDD has read/load speeds much faster than a PC with an SSD. (Optane increases in PC speed with an SSD for the most part are barely noticeable, however.)
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Then it's not interesting to me because I would never go back to old skool HDD's.

mirimir · Jun 23, 2018

Rasheed187 said: ↑

Then it's not interesting to me because I would never go back to old skool HDD's.
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Yeah. For one thing, they use lots of power, and generate lots of heat. On the other hand, a 5U box of 15K rpm SAS drives made entertaining noise. The fans got on my nerves, though.

guest · Aug 11, 2018

Intel hands first Optane DIMM to Google, where it'll collect dust until a supporting CPU arrives
Leaked roadmap emerges, still full of holes
August 10, 2018
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/10/optane_dimm_ceremonially_ships_but_lacks_any_xeon_support/

Navin Shenoy, exec veep and GM of Intel's Data Center Group, theatrically presented the kit, fresh off the production line, to Google platforms veep Bart Sano at Chipzilla's Santa Clara CA headquarters during its Data-Centric Innovation Summit on Wednesday.

Also many product details are missing, including: [...]
Unless Google has customised Xeon processors, its Optane DIMMs are going to sit on a shelf.
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xxJackxx · Aug 13, 2018

I assume that persistent RAM will leave us with the situation that when you need to reboot your PC because a program corrupts itself in memory that a reboot won't clear the issue?

reasonablePrivacy · Aug 13, 2018

xxJackxx said: ↑

I assume that persistent RAM will leave us with the situation that when you need to reboot your PC because a program corrupts itself in memory that a reboot won't clear the issue?
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Physical address in RAM is not the same as address user-space program is given because of Virtual Memory Address Translation.
I also think that program can have some sort of initialization functions that create empty data structures from scratch each time program starts.

mirimir · Aug 13, 2018

OK, so what are the implications for FDE passphrase recovery after reboot?

reasonablePrivacy · Aug 13, 2018

mirimir said: ↑

OK, so what are the implications for FDE passphrase recovery after reboot?
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Passphrase must be overwritten before reboot or shutdown, I guess. This should be done with current RAM, because it forgets data after a couple of seconds (up to a few minutes).
Actually probably a lot more should be overwritten to not disclose confidential data.

I don't worry much, because this technology probably is going to be implemented in datacenters for speeding-up large databases long before it hits consumer market.

latency is a bit worse than real DDR 4
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I think you need specifically patched database's to take advantage of this technology. Probably mix of "real DDR 4" and Optane memory is faster, but it would require patched operating systems to take advantage of that.

zapjb · Aug 13, 2018

Yeah before this RAM is released to consumers we'll be assured by Intel that everything is peachy.

guest · Apr 8, 2019

Intel Optane Persistent Memory starts at $850 for 128GB
That's a hell of a lot, but it's also a hell of a deal
April 7, 2019
https://www.techspot.com/news/79543-intel-optane-persistent-memory-starts-850-128gb.html

Forward-looking: Intel Optane Persistent Memory is now available for pre-order for $842 for a 128GB stick and $2,461 for a 256GB stick. That might sound like a lot, and it is compared prices for regular 16GB or 32GB DDR4 sticks, but in the server world that’s a tenth of the usual price.

The pitch is simple: in case a mission-critical system fails, whatever data was in the memory isn’t lost; and for memory intensive applications, it offers shockingly high capacity at low prices. The compromise is higher latency and lower raw speed compared to traditional volatile memory.
OPM occupies its niche fantastically, but it it will be a long time before it can expand to other markets.

Servers featuring Intel OPM are expected to arrive in June, but we don’t know when the single sticks will be available, and the retailers aren’t listing a release date. Performance is also a big question, not in terms of numbers and specs, but rather how various workloads will be affected by the lower speeds and increased capacity compared to traditional memory.
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guest · Apr 10, 2019

First Optane Performance tests show benefits and limits of Intel's NVDIMMs
Non-volatile Solid State Drives (SSDs) revolutionized data storage. Will Intel's non-volatile DIMMs do the same to servers?
April 10, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/first...s-show-benefits-and-limits-of-intels-nvdimms/

Finally, the first NVDIMM has come to market. Intel's Optane DC Persistent Memory Module sits on the processor's memory bus, is byte addressable - unlike block-based storage - and is much faster than any SSD.

There's no free lunch though. Optane's latency is higher than DRAM, it requires 2nd gen Cascade Lake Xeon processors, and offers widely different read and write bandwidth.

. . . its max read bandwidth is 33.2 GB/s and scales with thread count, whereas its max write bandwidth is 8.9 GB/s and peaks at only four threads.
Intel loaned test systems to researchers at UC San Diego loaded with 3TB of 256GB Optane DIMMs, though 128 and 512GB capacities are available. Their first paper includes performance data for Optane as main memory, persistent storage, and, perhaps the most intresting, persistent memory.
MAIN MEMORY
The team tested Optane with Memcache and Redis workloads, and found that performance dropped between 8.6 and 19.2 percent, using a DRAM cache. This sounds wrong, but remember, the server can now support 3TB of main memory, instead of only 192GB DRAM, vastly reducing storage traffic. [...]
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But there are two more interesting threads to follow. Intel isn't supporting Optane on non-Intel processors and it's Xeon only. Which means that, for most of us, Optane is a non-event.

Second, Optane isn't the only game in town. Nantero's carbon nanotube (CNT) promises to be faster and less costly than Optane. Arm has licensed two other NVRAM technologies as well.
Bottom line: the NVRAM/NVDIMM revolution is just starting. It promises to be a wild ride.
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Paper: "Basic Performance Measurements of the Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory Module - Or: It’s Finally Here! How Fast is it?"
(PDF - 1.22 MB): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.05714.pdf

guest · Sep 20, 2019

Optane persistent memory: Breakthrough or broken promise?
September 20, 2019
https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/20/optane-persistent-memory-breakthrough-or-broken-promise/

Companies looking to capitalize on the performance promise of Intel’s Optane persistent memory have been trying to vet the performance claims and calculate TCO for years now.

VentureBeat started covering Optane (or, more accurately, the 3D XPoint media underlying Optane) four years ago. At that time, Intel boasted that the new memory technology was 10 times denser than conventional DRAM, 1,000 times faster than the fastest NAND SSD, and 1,000 times the endurance of NAND.
However, at the same IDF presentation it was announced, Optane as demonstrated was only 7.23 times faster than the fastest available NAND SSD chips.

Where are the real-world numbers that prove the promise?
One way or another, it’s time we had a leap in capability. Now, we just need the results made public to prove that the promise of Optane is real and that we have a clear path forward for a world drowning in data.
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guest · Sep 26, 2019

Intel unveils second-gen Optane memory
September 26, 2019
https://www.crn.com.au/news/intel-unveils-second-gen-optane-memory-531536

Intel has unveiled the second generation of its Optane memory and storage products, all slated to release next year.

At Intel’s Memory and Storage Day in Seoul, South Korea, the company unveiled “Barlow Pass” Optane DC persistent memory and “Alder Stream” Optane DC SSDs.
The company didn't go into detail, but said there are "major" performance improvements from the previous generation.

Intel’s Optane DC persistent memory are high-density, high-performance, non-volatile memory modules compatible with DDR4 RAM slots, which allow servers to accommodate terabytes of non-volatile storage coupled with the CPU.
The company also revealed that it has started to manufacture Optane tech at an Intel facility in New Mexico in the US, following its recent split with Micron.
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guest · Jan 27, 2020

Intel Expects Second-Gen 3D XPoint to Launch Next Year
January 27, 2020
https://www.cdrinfo.com/d7/content/intel-expects-second-gen-3d-xpoint-launch-next-year

Intel announced last September its second-generation 3D XPoint and provided a roadmap into the future. ,The second-generation 3D XPoint memory features four layers of the memory, as opposed to two layers in the first generation. Intel has also talked about significant performance gains.

Intel's 'Barlow Pass' is the second-generation Optane DC persistent memory and 'Alder Stream' is a new Optane DC SSD. Intel's roadmap indicated that the products would launch together with the Whitley platform, which will see Cooper Lake in the first half of the year followed by Ice Lake at the end of the year.
However Intel’s annual report suggests that those products might not be released in 2020 at all.
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