The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280GB Review
by Billy Tallis on October 27, 2017 9:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P doesn't come in first place for overall data rate on the Light test, until the drives are filled and the average data rate of all the flash-based SSDs takes a big hit.
The average and 99th percentile latencies of the Optane SSD on the Light test are on par with the top flash-based SSDs when the test is run on an empty drive. When the drives are filled before the test, the flash-based SSDs slow down enough that the Optane SSD takes first place easily, with an especially wide margin on the 99th percentile latency.
The average read latency of the Optane SSD 900P on the Light test is merely tied for first place, when the test is run on an empty drive. When the drives are filled, the Optane SSD has half the average read latency of anything else. The write latency situation is quite different; whether or not the drives are filled, most of the top flash-based SSDs are able to fit the bursts of writes in their caches and deliver better latency than the uncached writes of the Optane SSD.
The 99th percentile read latency of the Optane SSD 900P on the Light test is tied for first place when the test is run on an empty drive, and leads by more than 60% when the drives are filled before the test. The 99th percentile write latency lags behind the top flash-based SSDs a bit, but nowhere near enough to be noticeable: the latency is still an order of magnitude lower than SATA SSDs.
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Hurr Durr - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
He desperately needs some CNC time to calm down, be merciful.Reflex - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
We need to compile a list of all the things you supposedly have been doing. I mean seriously, anything anyone brings up as a use case supposedly you've been doing forever at a professional level. And you use that imagined position to then attempt to clobber their own assertions about its applicability in the field they are discussing.ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
What can I say, I am a renaissance man. Also known as a polymath. I have scores of interests in all sorts of fields or science, arts and crafts, and I have employed many of those to make a living over the years. Where you collect pokemons, or postal stamps, or baseball hats or whatever, I collect skill and knowledge. Even the act of commenting here is part of my studies, social and psychological.Reflex - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Not only have you pursued your 'scores' of interests, you are the expert in all of them! We are truly gifted by your presence, I cannot wait to read your memoirs....MarceloC - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
"What can I say, I am a renaissance man. Also known as a polymath. I have scores of interests in all sorts of fields or science, arts and crafts, and I have employed many of those to make a living over the years. Where you collect pokemons, or postal stamps, or baseball hats or whatever, I collect skill and knowledge. Even the act of commenting here is part of my studies, social and psychological."LOL LOL LOL!
sor - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
You clearly don’t care about immediate persistence, consistent performance, or random reads.The numbers make a clear argument that Optane won’t be all that helpful for light workloads, but we already expected that; there’s only so much super fast IO can do for you if you’re not using IO.
I’d say those insane random reads and improved latencies live up to 3D Xpoint. There may be some elements to improve on but it is clear we are looking at a different, superior tech at a cost that is surprisingly affordable. Much of the initial talk about Xpoint was around whether or not it was real, if it was a hyped twist on regular flash, it seems clear it is a different animal.
ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
You clearly didn't pay attention to what I've written. I did indeed acknowledge the random reads as an obviously strong point.Judging by the "destroyer", it won't be that helpful in heavy workloads either. In fact, contrary to what you say, where it shines the most is exactly light workloads, which is what low QDs are. Push higher queue depths and NVME catches up.
Lolimaster - Saturday, October 28, 2017 - link
With most work using big files, 4k random performance is meaningless, everything is linear so huge sustained write/reads are prefered. 960EVO/Pro wins.ionstorm66 - Sunday, October 29, 2017 - link
I wonder how much more performance that same test system would get if it had 128GB of ram. The 900P 280GB is 389 bucks, 64GB kit of ram is 500 bucks. I'd take 64GB of system memory over 280gb of ssd storage anyday, especially with a system with a 960 pro already.mapesdhs - Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - link
Unless of course you're doing something that needs ECC, in which case that cost comparison is rather wide of the mark.