
New Intel Tech Bridges Gap Between Fast Conventional Memory, Longer-Term Storage - fmihaila
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-intel-technology-bridges-gap-between-speedy-conventional-memory-longer-term-storage-1489917600
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0xcde4c3db
Just going by the headline (since the usual paywall workarounds are failing),
it seems like this is a rehash of Intel's original marketing claims for 3D
XPoint/Optane, but as far as I can tell they've quietly backpedaled to
"expensive SSD" for the first-gen products.

This seems oddly reminiscent of Larrabee/Knight's Landing/Xeon Phi, which
started off being billed as Intel's high-performance GPU play (they reportedly
even hired Michael Abrash to optimize the rasterization code) and ended up
being a niche HPC accelerator.

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tw04
>Intel claims the raw 3D XPoint technology is 1,000 times faster than the NAND
flash commonly used in storage drives

I like haw they claim the "raw technology" is 1,000 times faster. Why? Because
the shipping product isn't anything NEAR 1,000 times faster. They started off
with that marketing claim months, and months, and months ago. The finished
product appears to be not even double the performance (depending on workload).

 _ahh, should 've kept reading:

>Although Intel touts 3D XPoint as orders of magnitude faster than NAND, it
said the new storage drives it is shipping are five-to-eight times faster than
NAND-based solid-state drives, because they are constrained by the
conventional interface used to connect storage to computers.

So the PCIe interface is the constraint? _please* you guys just over promised
and under delivered. NVMe can certainly push more than 5x what you can get out
of current NAND based drives.

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lousken
Just Intel underdelivering as always, nothing new.

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jpalomaki
Same article as in WSJ here? [http://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-
jones/TDJNDN_20170319473...](http://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-
jones/TDJNDN_20170319473/intel-looks-to-gain-from-data-explosion-with-new-
drives.html)

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throwaway000002
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13850746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13850746)

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jlgaddis
There's zero discussion there?

ETA: Oh, I get it now. _You_ submitted that one.

~~~
dsabanin
Except it's a different article.

