Why Did Intel Even Make This? – Optane 800P SSD

We all know by now Optane is fast… But can Intel’s latest SSD FINALLY bring Optane into the home? Or is it just half-baked and overpriced?

Buy an Intel Optane SSD 800P 58GB: 
On Newegg: http://geni.us/qxc6lJj

Buy an Intel Optane SSD 800P 118GB:
On Newegg: http://geni.us/QIcJuCT

Buy a WD Black SSD:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/qp6fXw
On Newegg: http://geni.us/6foi

Buy a Samsung 960 Pro:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/E0Acm
On Newegg: http://geni.us/3m8QT

Linus doesnt like it judging by the thumbnail.

still pointless and far to expensive given the minimal performance increase

10 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Linus doesnt like it judging by the thumbnail.

Or does he?!?!?  cLiCk HeRe tO fINd oUT!!!!1!!! 

Idiots.

That's who it's for.

They did it to optane your hard earned funds, aka a cache grab...

Ok I'll leave now.

@LinusTechMaybe for a swap partition, it would be nice to make a comparison.

For laptops and phones so they don't loose data when the battery dies.

For servers.

Everything else? Wait until it's cheaper/quicker, V2 or more, and use it in addition to SSD -> RAM -> SSD for a super fast/cheap buffer.

I think it is a conceptional proof that xpoint (read: Crosspoint) is coming.  Today, sure, there is little use for it, once the motherboards have adjusted and the true potential, as lanes and micro connectivity has been adopted by the industry, we will hopefully see this option more as a hybrid nand or supporting it in some way or fashion.  Today it is still more like a bridge in between the old and the new.  It is only like 7 years in de making, it has only been "known" outside of the patent offices and in the open for the past two, maybe three years.  What this device is for is for OEMs to give it a shot, to see how it runs in their hardware and for us enthusiasts to start thinking about the history of a hard disk in a computer.  I am looking forward to the first devices that use this devilish fast storage, could even be a phone, or maybe it is already inside the new 2018 iPhone.... who knows!! 

@LLXIR think further... In the next 5 years, the distinction between RAM and Storage as we know it today (and from the past) will completely disappear.  Look at what the main storage providers are doing (NetApp, Hitachi, EMC) in their labs.  Two years ago we started with all-flash arrays.  With unstructured data and "big data" the industry demands higher IOPS and cheaper storage.  Customers will demand from their providers that cloud will take on more and more load and yet here we are looking at "little devices" with small footprints....   Somehow someone needs to provide that cloud storage and the lower latencies and power consumptions will need to go with it, therefore NVMe is new today and as you justly observed that SSDs were expensive and only be used for cache in say 2012 it has now become main storage at a price we would never think of.  Heck, I remember my first computer was over 5k and only had 32kb of ram and two 5.25 drives.

"SSDs have gotten to the capacities and price that they can replace normal HDDs."

256GB SSD vs 3072GB HDD for $80... That isn't a replacement unless you're a single disk user that only needs 500GB of space. 

3 hours ago, LLXIR said:

@LinusTech I can see these things being used in Chromebooks, 2-in1s, surfacebook and probably the next macbook, since most upcoming laptops are becoming cloud-based and not local storage

Why would any of those, especially Chromebooks, go for a far more expensive solution anyway?

1 hour ago, Al van der Laan said:

 What this device is for is for OEMs to give it a shot, to see how it runs in their hardware and for us enthusiasts to start thinking about the history of a hard disk in a computer.  

I don't know about you, but I can think about the history of hard disks for free.

53 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

"SSDs have gotten to the capacities and price that they can replace normal HDDs."

 

256GB SSD vs 3072GB HDD for $80... That isn't a replacement unless you're a single disk user that only needs 500GB of space. 

Let's do this by capacity. I want 4TB. Do I go with the ~$120 WD Red, or the $1,400 860 Evo?

RIP SSD exclusive NAS pipe dream.

11 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Let's do this by capacity. I want 4TB. Do I go with the ~$120 WD Red, or the $1,400 860 Evo?

 

RIP SSD exclusive NAS pipe dream.

No one is talking about mass storage... No idea why people would interpret it that way. 

What I meant is that it's cost effective enough that its a no-brainer for tier 1 storage (OS and key applications). 

Most laptops, and literally all of the ones made by Apple use solid state storage. It's mainstream. 

3 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

Most laptops, and literally all of the ones made by Apple use solid state storage. It's mainstream. 

Most laptops running SSDs, which I guarantee you is not most of what's out there, either have higher costs as consequence, or use HDDs for mass storage.

5 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

What I meant is that it's cost effective enough that its a no-brainer for tier 1 storage (OS and key applications). 

So, basically, nothing has changed in the past five years.

5 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

No one is talking about mass storage... No idea why people would interpret it that way. 

Because most people are not like us. They don't want to manage systems with multiple drives. They don't want to worry about running out of space, regardless of whether they really need it or not. They want something that has one drive, or is set up before hand to show them one drive, that is relatively fast (7200RPM drives are fast enough for most people out there), high capacity, but not expensive.

I think the thing that's overlooked here is that its a PCI-E X2 drive, that is getting pretty good performance.

I would buy the shit out of this if it was in 2242 size format, and I think a lot of others with older laptops would as well.

A lot, and I mean all the laptops I know of in my office a lot, do not have space for a 2280 drive, and definitely are not keyed for 4X. 

Oh well though

I could see this being useful in datacenter work. Many caches are volatile, in that when the machine turns off the cache has to be rebuilt. Some caches are in memory and backed by disk - this Optane could be highly useful for that workload - but the low durability of only a few hundred TB hurts that thought.

I'm finding that 120GB SSDs is starting to be too small for Win7 office workstations when the only local user data is email. 58GB for a boot drive seems unlikely usage for sure, but for a small database or cache, seems like an option.

I've got to support an 2016 versioned app that uses a database type last updated in 1995 (Paradox). DB is only a few GBs and the only way to speed it up is throwing even more disk IOPS and faster clocked CPUs at it. A 58GB Optan could be suitable for that.

Actually, as a storage of SQL database it's might be a very good idea. I'd like to see tests of these optanes with SQLIO (a simple guide for that is here) or raw DiskSPD results with run settings like these (see spoiler). If there is ability to run tests in Raid 1\10 - i'd appreciate that. 

Here would be good test how long can optane hold store data before it degrades because you  can use it as secrete drive to store all you important documents on or use it as long term storage depending on how long it can hold the data ?