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Intel’s Optane technology (a.k.a 3D Xpoint) is a 3D transistor technology that is claimed to be up to 1000x faster than regular NAND. To those not in the know, NAND is the transistor technology normally found in Solid State Drives (SSD).
With performance approaching that of traditional RAM, Optane just might reshape the world of memory. The technology is very expensive at the moment, but even if used in smaller quantities, as cache, the benefits to performance can be huge.
Optane’s speeds, as demoed in a storage device at IDF Shenzen, showed transfer speeds consistently hitting the 1.35GBps mark. The more technically minded among you will be wondering why we’re comparing the 100GBps bandwidth of RAM with the 1.35GBps of Opane. That’s a very good question, especially when Intel’s own NVMe SSDs consistently hit that speed.
However, the main advantage of Optane, and the reason it’s being compared to RAM, is its latency, or the speed at which you can access bits of data.
In other words, the speed at which you access the data is more important than the rate at which you’re accessing it. A normal hard disk has a response time of about 16ms, a good SSD will respond in 0.05ms, RAM will respond in 50ns. To put that in perspective, 0.05ms is equal to 50,000ns. Optane’s exact response time is unknown at this time, but an Optane based SSD alone is claimed to be around 6-8 times faster than the fastest NAND SSD on the market.
Intel explains that the technology doesn’t entail an upgrade to a new platform, such as to their upcoming Kaby Lake , which is said to support Optane directly. Optane technology can be used to build SSDs and similar storage and cache mediums that will offer ridiculous speeds on any PC. That said, explicit support for Optane will possibly enable the birth of the first, true RAMDisk—a storage device that offers the speed and performance of RAM, but with the ability to actually store the data permanently.
Optane might one day eliminate the need for RAM altogether.
Intel's Optane technology results in SSDs that are almost as fast as RAM Tech2 Mobile
With performance approaching that of traditional RAM, Optane just might reshape the world of memory. The technology is very expensive at the moment, but even if used in smaller quantities, as cache, the benefits to performance can be huge.
Optane’s speeds, as demoed in a storage device at IDF Shenzen, showed transfer speeds consistently hitting the 1.35GBps mark. The more technically minded among you will be wondering why we’re comparing the 100GBps bandwidth of RAM with the 1.35GBps of Opane. That’s a very good question, especially when Intel’s own NVMe SSDs consistently hit that speed.
However, the main advantage of Optane, and the reason it’s being compared to RAM, is its latency, or the speed at which you can access bits of data.
In other words, the speed at which you access the data is more important than the rate at which you’re accessing it. A normal hard disk has a response time of about 16ms, a good SSD will respond in 0.05ms, RAM will respond in 50ns. To put that in perspective, 0.05ms is equal to 50,000ns. Optane’s exact response time is unknown at this time, but an Optane based SSD alone is claimed to be around 6-8 times faster than the fastest NAND SSD on the market.
Intel explains that the technology doesn’t entail an upgrade to a new platform, such as to their upcoming Kaby Lake , which is said to support Optane directly. Optane technology can be used to build SSDs and similar storage and cache mediums that will offer ridiculous speeds on any PC. That said, explicit support for Optane will possibly enable the birth of the first, true RAMDisk—a storage device that offers the speed and performance of RAM, but with the ability to actually store the data permanently.
Optane might one day eliminate the need for RAM altogether.
Intel's Optane technology results in SSDs that are almost as fast as RAM Tech2 Mobile
