
The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280G Review - dis-sys
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11953/the-intel-optane-ssd-900p-review
======
dis-sys
A couple interesting points in the official spec -

1\. Write Endurance is amazing, you can keep writing 2.8Tbytes per day every
day for 5 years, as a comparison, Intel 750 only allow you to write 70GBytes
per day. Such high write endurance does raise an interesting question - why
still bother paying for those expensive enterprise NAND SSD.

2\. Random IO performance is identical to P4800x, what Intel actually took
away from P4800x or is 900P just a slightly different product with a slightly
revised spec list. ;)

For me, this is the most exciting hardware release in 2017, the price point is
just amazing, it is going significantly boost the performance I am going to
get from my distributed consensus library which requires fsync for each write.

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iClaudiusX
The niche for this device is high random read performance in workloads where
the dataset is too large to fit in RAM, for a significant price premium.
Random write and sequential read/write performance is poor value compared to
cheaper and higher capacity NVME ssds from Samsung.

The one standout feature apparently is that performance is reliable and not
subject to GC stalls or degradation as the drive fills up.

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bkeroack
500k sustained random IOPS from a single device is remarkable. To put that in
perspective, 500k PIOPS in AWS would cost you $32,500/month
([https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/)).

This drive looks like it would be amazing for database workloads, for example.

~~~
phonon
An EC2 I3 has up to 3.3 million IOPS.

[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/02/now-
avail...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/02/now-available-
amazon-ec2-i3-instances-next-generation-storage-optimized-high-i-o-instances/)

~~~
bkeroack
"Up to". Also we don't know how many underlying SSD devices there are, which
is my point. This is a single drive that supports radically more _sustained_
random IOPS than we've ever seen, at a very low price point compared to
comparable solutions.

~~~
phonon
That's with eight 1.9 TB devices. You can scale it down, of course.

Anyway, the point is you do not need to spend anywhere near $32,500/m to get
that kind of performance from AWS. (As long as you don't mind using non-EBS
storage.) In this case, an i3.16xlarge is $27,856 per YEAR (if paid upfront).

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bitL
Remind you, transfer throughput improvements from HDD to SDD had limited
effect on perceived performance; the reduction in latency was what made SSDs
magical (compare normal USB stick to USB sticks with SSD controller). Optane
when they manage to get it to original promise and optimize software around
it, should yield a similar latency reduction, making them feel much snappier
than current SSDs, though throughput-wise they might not be so shiny.

~~~
the_jeremy
I didn't see in the article anything talking explicitly about latency
reduction. I know SSDs have much lower latency than HDDs; could you expand /
provide stats on how 3D Xpoint's latency compares to SSD?

~~~
mozumder
I have an Intel i750 NVMe SSD. It has about a 60 microsecond latency.

This device is supposed to be on the order of 10 microsecond.

The only people that would notice that are people running database servers
serving hundreds of thousands of users.

------
nimos
I wonder what the relative production cost is for the 3D Xpoint vs NAND. Given
the newer state of the technology it seems like there might be more low
hanging fruit in terms of performance/cost improvement.

If Intel can hit a production cost per GB close to standard NAND it seems like
they would be able to absolutely dominate the premium consumer/enterprise SSD
market.

~~~
wmf
The production cost is probably pretty high:
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/11454/techinsights-
publishes-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/11454/techinsights-publishes-
preliminary-analysis-of-3d-xpoint-memory)

------
the_jeremy
Does anyone know if there are stats on things like Windows boot times / game
load times? I've seen graphs that show boot times comparable between average
SSDs and the 960 EVO; is this something an average home user could feel an
improvement with?

~~~
jjaredsimpson
Booting Windows and loading games is full of large sequential reads using high
queue depths. This is something ssd controller can optimize well already.

Average consumers don't need this. Enthusiast gamers don't need this. This is
enterprise hardware rebranded for consumers.

~~~
tigershark
No, it's exactly the opposite. Enterprise workload with a big queue depth is
the realm of SSD. Xpoint brings the same or much better speed (use case
dependent) even to the consumers that need for 99% of the time a queue depth
between 1 and 4.

------
montecarl
Its super exciting for new storage technologies to be released, but at this
time it doesn't seem that much better than Samsung's Evo 960, which can be had
for much lower prices.

~~~
thriftwy
It is aeons better if they deliver:

* High Read And Write Performance At Small Capacity Points

* High Performance Maintained As The Drive Fills

* Heavy Workloads That Cause Drive Wear And Require High Endurance

Because SSD fail all three:

They require huge blocks to be wiped if you want to write anything, they grind
to halt once you fill past 50%, and they eventually degrade.

From what I've seen in charts, they deliver.

~~~
pvg
"aeons better" is like "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs"

~~~
Dylan16807
Do you think "generations better" is bad, too? Aeons are like that but more
intense.

~~~
pvg
I think 'generations better' is also lousy but at least 'generations' as
'stages of technological development of something, over time' is common
figurative usage. 'Aeons' isn't, making it much sillier. Intensely sillier, if
you prefer.

~~~
Dylan16807
Aeons are commonly used for revolutionary stages of something. Not necessarily
improvement, but definitely giant leaps of progress. It's not just a measure
of raw time.

~~~
pvg
I can think of a retort that is ages and eras better than this!

------
merkaloid
Looks like its almost completely worthless for consumers. Real world
performance is the same as NVMe drives yet at much higher $/GB

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
I would expect anybody working with DAWs and sample libraries (extremely low
latency random read performance needed, meaning every note playing can be a
sample anywhere on your drive) would jump at these, both pros and amateurs.

~~~
dharma1
I've been thinking about moving my Kontakt libraries to a fast SSD. Would you
see a difference noticeable between this and Samsung 960 for that purpose?

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
I'm assuming it depends from the size of your template (i.e. how many samples
at a time you're using). For not huge templates you can already run kontakt
fully purged off the SSD, but I would assume with this the limiter would be
pretty much entirely the CPU... still I don't know of anybody having done any
DAW tests with XPoint and large sample libraries (say, Spitfire etc.), would
be interesting to see what kind of polyphony a high core CPU with this would
be able to achieve...

~~~
dharma1
Some stress testing with older SSD's here - [https://vi-
control.net/community/threads/performance-to-be-e...](https://vi-
control.net/community/threads/performance-to-be-expected-from-ssd-for-
spitfire.58693/)

I use Spitfire stuff, mainly Albion, but the voice requirements these guys
have is on another level. The Optane speedup would certainly mean more voices,
and perhaps remove the need to have separate SSD's for each large kontakt
library?

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
yeah, vi-control is a really good forum for these discussions :) I am waiting
for a post from Chimuelo saying he's tried optane, as he seems to regularly
try new hardware. I would think that optane would be amazing for this and
would basically make your CPU the limiter as opposed to your storage, on the
other hand it makes me wonder if Kontakt can take full advantage of this.

------
fhood
Is this really a product for "enthusiasts"? It seems to me like this would be
far more valuable for servers and the like than "esports gamers".

~~~
wmf
Note that "enthusiast" is kind of a euphemism for people with more money than
sense who buy overpowered hardware they don't need.

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polskibus
I wish benchmarks included C++, C#, js (gulp? Webpack?) and Java builds so
that programmers knew whether an upgrade is worth it.

~~~
ryanlol
It is not. If your builds are being bottlenecked by io, they're probably
almost instant.

~~~
polskibus
I'd like to see such tests in all benchmarks not just this one.

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vbezhenar
Price is truly amazing. I expected 280GB to cost around $700. This thing is
going into my next PC.

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saas_co_de
very disappointing compared to the original marketing promises.

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ntrepid8
I think I need to get one of these.

