What makes Intel Optane stand out (2023)

It stands out, because it didn't sell. Which is weird because there were some pretty big pros about using them. The latency for updating 1 byte was crazy good. Some databases or journals for something like zfs really benefited from this.

For a good technical explanation at the physical level of a memory cell:

https://pcper.com/2017/06/how-3d-xpoint-phase-change-memory-...

Related: "High-bandwidth flash progress and future" (15 comments), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46700384

In an era of RAM shortages and quarterly price increases, Optane remains viable for swap and CPU/GPU cache.

These are absolute beasts for database servers, and definitely needs to make a comeback.

They suck for large sequential file access, but incredible for small random access: databases.

Optane was crazy good tech, it way just too expensive at the time for mass adoption, but the benefits were so good.

Looking at those charts, besides the DWPD it feels like normal NVMe has mostly caught up. I occassionally wonder where a gen 7/8(?) optane would be today if it caught on, it'd probably be nuts.

I don't have the inside scoop on Intel's current mess, but they definitely have a habit of killing off their coolest projects.

My understanding is Optane is still unbeaten when it comes to latency. Has anyone examined its use as an OS volume, compared to today's leading SSD's? I know the throughput won't be as high, but in my experience that's not as important to how responsive your machine feels as latency.

One potential application I briefly had hope for was really good power loss protection in front of a conventional Flash SSD. You only need a little compared to the overall SSD capacity to be able to correctly report the write was persisted, and it's always running, so there's less of a 'will PLP work when we really need it?' question. (Maybe there's some use as a read cache too? Host RAM's probably better for that, though.) It's going to be rewritten lots of times, but it's supposed to be ready for that.

It seems like there's a very small window, commercially, for new persistent memories. Flash throughput scales really cost-efficiently, and a lot is already built around dealing with the tens-of-microseconds latencies (or worse--networked block storage!). Read latencies you can cache your way out of, and writers can either accept commit latency or play it a little fast and loose (count a replicated write as safe enough or...just not be safe). You have to improve on Flash by enough to make it worth the leap while remaining cheaper than other approaches to the same problem, and you have to be confident enough in pulling it off to invest a ton up front. Not easy!

Around the time of Optane's discontinuation, the rumor mill was saying that the real reason it got the axe was that it couldn't be shrunk any, so its costs would never go down. Does anyone know if that's true? I never heard anything solid, but it made a lot of sense given what we know about Optane's fab process.

And if no shrink was possible, is that because it was (a) possible but too hard; (b) known blocks to a die shrink; or (c) execs didn't want to pay to find out?

All those nice numbers are just beaten by the unit cost. And the ecosystem is a mess.

Did anyone ever see retention issues like this guy reported on one of his older models?

https://goughlui.com/2024/07/28/tech-flashback-intel-optane-...

My kingdom for a MicroSD card with Optane inside. My dashcam wants it soooo badly.

Sure, they were expensive but they have great endurance and sustained read and write speeds. I use one in my car for camera recordings. I had gone through several other drives but this one has been going on 3 or 4 years now without issue. I have a couple more in use too. It's a shame this tech is going away because it's excellent.

Maybe we can also mention the HP Memristor here.

I’m still sad they discontinued them. What’s the alternative now does anything come close?

I feel sorry about the situation. From my perspective Optane was a godsend for databases. I was contemplating building a system. Could've been a pinnacle of vertical scalability for cheap.

Fabs are expensive and all, but maybe running a right-sized fab could have still been profitable at making optane for low-latency work that it was so good at. Even moreso with RAM prices as they are.

Now do Intel's HBM/CPU Max

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