Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X 750GB Hands-On Review
by Billy Tallis on November 9, 2017 12:00 PM ESTConclusion
There aren't really any surprises to this review. As promised, the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X 750GB performs about the same as the 375GB model we tested earlier this year, which puts it far above the flash-based competition. The doubling of the drive's capacity has brought it up to a far more usable level where it can more easily be regarded as either an expansion of memory or as a reasonably large storage device that is extremely fast.
The Optane SSD DC P4800X is not a one size fits all enterprise SSD, but for certain use cases it has almost no competition. SSDs using SLC NAND once offered latency close to the Optane SSD, but their high prices made them a niche product that most manufacturers decided wasn't viable. 3D XPoint memory is significantly more expensive than current 3D MLC and 3D TLC NAND flash memory, but the low latency and high performance consistency it enables have a place in today's enterprise SSD market.
Testing the ostensibly consumer-oriented Optane SSD 900p in the context of enterprise storage reveals the 900p to be just as competent in the performance department. There are several enterprise-class features missing from the 900p, most notably support for different sector sizes with protection metadata. Support for out of band management and is more of a convenience than a necessity except in large scale cloud hosting deployments. The missing enterprise features are not a showstopper for every enterprise customer. Otherwise, the 900p is roughly the P4800X in different capacities with a lower write endurance rating and a proportionally lower price. The 900p is essentially an entry-level Optane enterprise SSD, with a value proposition that is at least as attractive as the Optane P4800X.
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Lord of the Bored - Thursday, November 9, 2017 - link
Me too. ddriver is most of why I read the comments.mkaibear - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
He is always good for a giggle. I suppose he's busy directing hard drive manufacturers to make special hard drive platters for him solely out of hand-gathered sand from the Sahara. Or something.Still it's a shame to miss the laughs. It's always the second thing I do on SSD articles - first read the conclusion, then go and see what deedee has said. Ah well.
extide - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Please.. don't jinx us!rocky12345 - Thursday, November 9, 2017 - link
Interesting drive to say the least. Also a well written review thanks.PeachNCream - Thursday, November 9, 2017 - link
30 DWPD over the course of 5 years turns into a really large amount of data when you're talking about 750GB of capacity. Isn't the typical endurance rating more like 0.3 DPWD for enterprise solid state?So this thing about Optane on DIMMs is really interesting to me. Is the plan for it to replace RAM and storage all at once or to act as a cache or some sort between faster DRAM and conventional solid state? Even with the endurance its offering right now, it seems like it would need to be more durable still for it to replace RAM.
Oh (sorry case of shinies) could this be like a DIMM behind HBM on the CPU package where HBM does more of the write heavy stuff and then Optane lives between HBM and SSD or HDD storage? Has Intel let much out of the bag about this sorta thing?
Billy Tallis - Thursday, November 9, 2017 - link
Enterprise SSDs are usually sorted into two or three endurance tiers. Drives meant for mostly-read workloads typically have endurance ratings of 0.3 DWPD. High-endurance drives for write-intensive uses are usually 10, 25 or 30 DWPD, but the ratings of high-endurance drives have decayed somewhat in recent years as the market realized few applications really need that much endurance.lazarpandar - Thursday, November 9, 2017 - link
Can this be used to supplement addressable system memory? I remember Intel talking about that during the product launch.Billy Tallis - Thursday, November 9, 2017 - link
Yes. It makes for a great swap device, especially with a recent Linux kernel. Alternatively, Intel will sell it bundled with a hypervisor that presents the guest OS with a pool of memory equal in size to the system's DRAM plus about 85% of the Optane drive's capacity. The hypervisor manages memory placement, so from the guest OS's perspective the memory is a homogeneous pool, not x GB of DRAM and y GB of Optane.tuxRoller - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
It's a bit odd Intel would go for the hypervisor solution since the kernel can handle tiered pmem and it's in a better position to know where to place data.I suppose it's useful because it's cross-platform?
xype - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
I’d guess a hypervisor solution would also allow any critical fixes to be propagated faster/easier than having to go through a 3rd party (kernel) provider?