• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Intel's next-generation SSD technology is finally ready and it's really, really fast

Status
Not open for further replies.

entremet

Member
Intel and Micron Technology have been working on a new-generation memory technology since about 2012. It's called 3D XPoint (not to be confused with 3D NAND), and it's absurdly fast. A good way to think of it is as a compromise between the speed of DRAM and the capacity of traditional flash storage. Unlike RAM, 3D XPoint is non-volatile (doesn't lose what it's storing when the power is off), and it's about four times denser. It's more expensive per gigabyte than NAND flash — the current technology inside SSDs — but it's faster in nearly every possible way, especially when it comes to latency and reading / writing small bits of data.

Now Intel has started shipping its first product with the new technology: the 375GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X. It's a $1520 PCIe card, working on the same NVMe standard that's popular for traditional SSDs right now.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/4/20/15375828/intel-optane-3d-xpoint-ssd-reviews
 

Radec

Member
the 375GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X. It's a $1520 PCIe card

tired_george_michael_arrested_development.gif
 

entremet

Member
Sweet, I'll look forward to it being in my computer in 10 years.

Tech moves way faster than that! Remember the first SSDs and their prices?

Eventually, SSDs will be the standard and these will be the new SSDs. Apple is already there basically with their entire notebook line and many other notebook makers are also there.
 

Exuro

Member
Huh I thought 3D XPoint was memristor tech but apparently not. Pretty cool they have a cross bar array without transistors. Wonder what they did for the sneak path issue.
 

WaterAstro

Member
I stopped looking at Intel when they switched to third party Marvell controllers.

They used to make the most reliable SSDs until then.
 

Exuro

Member
Practically unrelated, but should I avoid under-$100 SSD's? I'm poor but I want to make the jump to a 120gb ssd
If you're using an hdd right now then anything will be better, though always check out reviews as like most products there will be duds that you should ignore. Under $100 for a 120 is a pretty typical price. I got my 1TB for $200 so you could easily find a quality ssd at 250GB for around/under $100.
 

SRG01

Member
I thought X-Point had been panned so hard that it isn't even close to their engineering claims, especially with all the development/engineering news from last year.
 
Practically unrelated, but should I avoid under-$100 SSD's? I'm poor but I want to make the jump to a 120gb ssd

I have a 120gb ssd for the OS and programs and a 1tb hdd for music, videos and everything else in my MacBook. It works out really well. It's definitely worth the upgrade.
 

MBR

Banned
TFW your porn collection exceeds the size of Intels fastest SSD
You don't want to be too quick, women likes a man who takes his time to appreciate them.
I can only assume the same goes for porn actresses.
 

NandoGip

Member
If you're using an hdd right now then anything will be better, though always check out reviews as like most products there will be duds that you should ignore. Under $100 for a 120 is a pretty typical price. I got my 1TB for $200 so you could easily find a quality ssd at 250GB for around/under $100.

I have a 120gb ssd for the OS and programs and a 1tb hdd for music, videos and everything else in my MacBook. It works out really well. It's definitely worth the upgrade.

Samsung SSD at 256GB are 100 bucks during BF.


Thanks guys. I pulled the trigger too slow on a deal I saw the other day for around $50.00. I'm not in a rush so I've been keeping an eye out.
 

SRG01

Member
Neat! Wish they actually gave IOPS or throughput numbers

Semiaccurate posted a pretty thorough collection of Intel's X-Point slides from their conferences. Charlie does rant on about the product a lot but the numbers don't lie, unfortunately.
 

entremet

Member
I used to get 5tb Seagates for just twice that. Somehow the Toshiba was the one to crap out though.

If you want to store a lot of media, go conventional of course.

But there is a different utility to SSDs, which is performance. I don't have huge media libraries, I stream everything, movies, music, TV, so my 500SSD is fine.

SSDs are simply the best upgrade for day to day performance you can buy. You can also have a mix. SSD for OS and main applications and conventional HDDs for media collections.
 

aeolist

Banned
Neat! Wish they actually gave IOPS or throughput numbers

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11209...ep-dive-into-3d-xpoint-enterprise-performance

the anandtech review has intel's numbers:

Random Read (4 kB) IOPS (QD16) 550,000
Random Read 99.999% Latency (QD1) 60µs
Random Read 99.999% Latency (QD16) 150µs
Random Write (4 kB) IOPS (QD16) 500,000
Random Write 99.999% Latency (QD1) 100µs
Random Write 99.999% Latency (QD16) 200µs
Mixed 70/30 (4kB) Random IOPS (QD16) 500,000

they focus on IOPS and latency because sequential throughput isn't really higher than NAND. it's a specialized technology that's better for certain (mostly server) workloads.
 
If you want to store a lot of media, go conventional of course.

But there is a different utility to SSDs, which is performance. I don't have huge media libraries, I stream everything, movies, music, TV, so my 500SSD is fine.

SSDs are simply the best upgrade for day to day performance you can buy. You can also have a mix. SSD for OS and main applications and conventional HDDs for media collections.

I'm currently looking into tape drives for long term storage anyways. The only SSD I need is for the OS. I used to wait 30min-1hr to play a mission in Wing Commander 3, so anything modern is a cakewalk.
 

mr jones

Ethnicity is not a race!
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11209...ep-dive-into-3d-xpoint-enterprise-performance

the anandtech review has intel's numbers:



they focus on IOPS and latency because sequential throughput isn't really higher than NAND. it's a specialized technology that's better for certain (mostly server) workloads.

Yup.

Only thing is, as a sysadmin, there's no way that I'd be able to justify switching out 12 10k drives for these, just so our engineers could access their CAD designs a few seconds faster.
 

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
I like the idea of even faster SSDs but current cheap SSDs are already really damn fast for my day to day use. For all that money these things cost, I doubt you'd see anywhere near the performance increase that was going from HDD to SSD.

I guess it'd be great for people with regular large file transfers?
 

FyreWulff

Member
I like the idea of even faster SSDs but current cheap SSDs are already really damn fast for my day to day use. For all that money these things cost, I doubt you'd see anywhere near the performance increase that was going from HDD to SSD.

I guess it'd be great for people with regular large file transfers?

mostly servers at this point, yeah, although I could see an use for consumers where there's a small amount of it for swap or something
 

SRG01

Member
I like the idea of even faster SSDs but current cheap SSDs are already really damn fast for my day to day use. For all that money these things cost, I doubt you'd see anywhere near the performance increase that was going from HDD to SSD.

I guess it'd be great for people with regular large file transfers?

If you want faster and cheap SSDs, you should lean towards 3D NAND instead of a new architecture.
 

Izuna

Banned
You won't need that much tho, about 64GB and you can get SSD-like performance on a 1TB HDD.

The idea that it can replace ram and the need to replace HDD technology is interesting.

I'll get an SSD when it's reliable in storing data long term.

What makes you say this?
 
Once everything is getting designed with the assumption that it'll be on NAND (ie much higher I/O workloads), this will be more likely to confer serious useful boosts to regular people over and above what NAND does.

Basically, I expect to see this being useful in smartphones before it's useful in PCs.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Even regular NVME drives are expensive as fuck
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom