Caching And Tiering: Intel Optane Memory H20 and Enmotus FuzeDrive SSD Reviewed

Our suite of Linux-based synthetic tests cannot directly measure how the Intel Optane Memory H20 or Enmotus FuzeDrive SSD behave when used with their respective caching or tiering software, but we can investigate how the individual components of those storage systems perform in isolation. The tests on this page are all conducted on our usual AMD Ryzen testbed.

Advanced Synthetic Tests

Our benchmark suite includes a variety of tests that are less about replicating any real-world IO patterns, and more about exposing the inner workings of a drive with narrowly-focused tests. Many of these tests will show exaggerated differences between drives, and for the most part that should not be taken as a sign that one drive will be drastically faster for real-world usage. These tests are about satisfying curiosity, and are not good measures of overall drive performance. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.

Whole-Drive Fill

Pass 1	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB
Pass 2	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB

As expected, we see fairly steady write performance from the Intel Optane devices, including on the second write pass—but the total throughput is still quite low compared to NAND SSDs. The SLC portion of the Enmotus FuzeDrive SSD has similar performance consistency, but competitive throughput. The QLC portion of that drive does have the typical drive-managed SLC cache that starts out with a capacity of about 333 GB when this section of the drive is empty, and shrinks down to about 19 GB for the second pass when the drive is full.

Average Throughput for last 16 GB	Overall Average Throughput

The SLC portion of the Enmotus FuzeDrive SSD is naturally far faster for the overall fill process than the drives that run out of SLC and slow down part way through. The Optane devices aren't quite in a "slow and steady wins the race" situation against the traditional NAND SSDs, but the Optane Memory H20's cache device is at least faster than the post-cache performance of the QLC drives and the DRAMless Samsung 980.

Working Set Size

Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB

There's a bit of variability in the random read latency of the Optane cache on the Optane Memory H20, but it's so much faster than the NAND devices that a bit of inconsistency hardly matters. We're just seeing noise that only shows up at this scale and is insignificant at NAND speeds. The SLC slice of the FuzeDrive SSD is faster than any of the other NAND drives, but it's a narrow lead. These fast devices naturally do not show any of the performance drop-off that comes from having insufficient DRAM: the Optane caches don't need it in the first place, and the SLC portion of the FuzeDrive SSD is small enough to be managed with a fraction of the drive's DRAM.

Performance vs Block Size

Random Read	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB
Random Write	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB
Sequential Read	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB
Sequential Write	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB

The Optane cache on the H20 behaves almost exactly like previous Optane Memory devices, except that it has acquired a strong dislike for sequential writes one 512B sector at a time. We often see sub-4kB sequential writes performing badly on NAND devices because the flash translation layer operates with 4kB granularity, so perhaps Intel has switched something in this Optane module to operate with 1kB granularity and it now needs to perform a read-modify-write cycle to handle this case. (The lack of a similar performance drop for random writes is a bit of a puzzle.)

The SLC portion of the Enmotus FuzeDrive SSD shows similar overall behavior to other Phison-based NAND drives, albeit with generally higher performance.

Mixed IO Performance

For details on our mixed IO tests, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.

Mixed Random IO	Throughput	Power	Efficiency
Mixed Sequential IO	Throughput	Power	Efficiency

The Intel Optane devices handle the mixed random IO test better than any of the NAND drives, and the Optane Memory H20's speed improvements over the H10 bring it up to the level of the larger 118GB Optane SSD 800P. The SLC portion of the Enmotus FuzeDrive SSD performs comparably to a decent 1TB TLC drive with SLC cache.

On the mixed sequential IO test, the Optane devices are far slower than the NAND devices, and the SLC has no real advantage either. A fast controller and lots of NAND is the best recipe for high performance on this test.

Mixed Random IO	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB
Mixed Sequential IO	Intel Optane Memory H20 1TB (32GB 3DXP)Intel SSD 670p 2TBIntel Optane SSD 800P 118GBSamsung 970 EVO Plus 1TBSamsung SSD 980 1TBEnmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (128GB SLC)Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 1.6TB (QLC)Intel Optane Memory H10 512GB (32GB 3DXP)Corsair MP400 1TBSK hynix Gold P31 1TBWD Blue SN550 1TBWestern Digital SN730 1TBWD Black SN850 1TB

The Optane devices show completely different performance trends from the NAND devices on the mixed random IO test: the Optane drives speed up significantly as the workload gets more write-heavy, while the NAND drives have flat or declining performance. On the mixed sequential IO test, the Optane behavior is a bit more normal, albeit with very low-end performance.