So, intel is selling optane memory, for what i understand it works as a ram cache

So, intel is selling optane memory, for what i understand it works as a ram cache.
Is there any way to replicate this with actual ram?

Other urls found in this thread:

ebay.de/b/NetApp/bn_21831538
lenovopress.com/tips1141-exflash-dimms
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Yes, it can work as RAM. But of course it's not as fast. It has limited use as a buffer between RAM and swap space.

yes but can we replicate it with ram?

I don't think you'd want to do that because your PC would run like dogshit.

swap file on your ssd.

Memory is a hierarchy where we trade access times for size from your processor registers of bytes and nanoseconds to your long term storage of terabytes. Every time something needs to get something from the next level up, it incurs an IO penalty: think of the difference in load times between installing an OS on an SSD and on an HDD.

For now, 'Optane' is intended to fill the gap between RAM and an SSD. Therefore, it is cheaper for x amount of Optane than for x amount of RAM, but the access times are lower. Since the price per byte isn't that much different from RAM, Optane is currently a poor investment.

So Optane replaces an SSD as a RAM cache, and using RAM as a cache for itself isn't just a bad idea, it doesn't even make sense. Just buy more RAM. Even a motherboard that fits more RAM could be a cheaper, more effective investment.

Optane won't be useful until it replaces flash.

The idea behind it is Optane combines both RAM and storage into 1 medium.

For now it fails at both. And endurance is simply atrocious.

NVDIMM.

Slower than RAM!
Less storage than an SSD!
More expensive than either!

It's Optane™!

>i-it'll get better, just wait(tm)

>optane memory
this is a wonderful explanation.

I read the intel website trying to figure out what the hell optane memory is. the intel website doesnt say shit about what it is, only why you should buy it (everything you like to do will load faster!!!)

Yes you can replicate any storage with RAM. I've got an idea for a RAM hard drive. Get a bunch of old RAM. Whatever is cheapest per GB. You're going to be operating them in parallel so the throughput of a technology doesn't really matter here and you're going to have a lot of sticks.

Now you build a digital circuit that interfaces with the PC through PCI-e and the RAM through a DDR controller. It emulates a storage device on the PCI-e bus but uses RAM internally. You implement a battery backup internally. You also put a normal HDD inside. When external power is lost, as in the computer is turned off, your circuit switches to backup power. It then writes the contents of RAM to the HDD and powers down. When power is turned back on the circuit reads the content of the HDD in to its RAM. Congrats you now have nonvolatile storage operating at RAM speed.

The problem is if you have to ask whether this is possible you don't have the skills necessary to do it. I don't want one bad enough to spend the hours of research, design, and debugging necessary to put this together.

So yeah it can be done. I don't think there's a market for it to make it profitable.

that's marketing

marketers don't want you to know what you're buying, because you'll fill in the blanks; human psychology thing, honestly these professional liars should be taken out to gulags and shot, anyways, that's why they don't say it. They want you uninformed or misinformed.

>these professional liars should be taken out to gulags and shot

Wow.

totally true.
This is what I read on Intel's website when trying to determine what the product actually is:
>"Optimize your computer responsiveness with up to 2x1 faster boot, 5x2 faster web browser launch, and 67% faster3 game launch. Intel® Optane™ memory is a smart and adaptable system accelerator that adjusts to your computing tasks making everything you do faster, smoother, easier. "

100% marketing bullshit no substantial or informative content.

your right user, we should just skip the gulag and go straight to the shooting

They're marketing it to the mainstream as a sort of Readyboost 2.0 for normies still running on old-ass HDDs. It's barely even worth it. It boosts your HDD to crappy eMMC levels of performance.

>not as fast as RAM
>not as robust as RAM
>5x more expensive
>3x more power hungry
>trying to be a RAM cache for servers
So why the fuck wouldn't they just add more fucking RAM? This piece of shit was shilled as being the next SSD.
>Is there any way to replicate this with actual ram?
Yeah, use an OS. It does things like disk caching for you.

It's still impressively fast though

Because adding more RAM means adding more memory channels on die. And that's hard unless you're AMD and you're cheating by using MCM.

And it's non volatile

>if we use Intel then they cripple the processor and force you to buy Optane(tm) to get more fake RAM, so instead of just buying for fucking RAM you have to buy a little bit of RAM and some Optane(tm)
wtf I love Intel now

Except it dies in a few month of active usage.
Buy Skylake Xeons, goy. What do you mean, it has two less memory channels than EPYC? Buy Optane, goy.

skylake xeons are pretty shit desu

So basically an SSD but with a PCI-E interface, slightly faster throughput and reliable?
Sounds like a great idea!

M.2

dont forget
>fewer pci lanes

You werent going to use them for SSDs anyway ;^)

But imagine now, instead of loading pages from a database, the whole thing on storage is also in memory.

>Is there any way to replicate this with actual ram?
Yes, ram disk have been a thing for a while now, current Samsung SSDs can use ram as cache and AMD used to sell ramdisk software to use with their modules, optane is just a meme, faster and cheaper SSDs will appear before it fully hits the market.

Unless SSDs are a lot faster that I've realized it would be ridiculously higher throughput. If properly designed it could saturate a GPU slot. I think the only real drawbacks here are cost and the warm up time. It would take time to pull the data off of the hard drive on power on. You could design it so that it could prioritize loading requested data and have hard drive speeds during warm up. It's basically a modern hard drive with cache the size of the HDD instead of a few MB.

The main thing I see blocking this commercially is sourcing the RAM. It's one thing to find a few dozen sticks of old DDR for dirt cheap. It's another to find it on a scale necessary to mass produce them. Using new RAM means you're stuck at RAM prices which isn't appealing because you could just set up a ramdisk.

Pretty much any interface would work. M.2, SATA, PCI-e, USB, anything. It's a bunch of data and you have to get it to the CPU somehow. Then write the drivers so the OS knows what to do with it. If you wanted to take this idea and run with it I'd pick the fastest choice available on your hardware.

>relies on a battery backup
>reliable
lol.

Another idea, could I use it as super fast boot drive. If I can, I might buy it in the future

Just get an actual M.2 drive. The read/write cycles on Optane suck too much.

>could I use it as super fast boot drive.
See
>link to linus shill tips shitting on optain.

That's using it as Readyboost for a regular HDD. It sucks at doing that, too, but using Optane just on it's own to boot off of is stupid because it has terrible read/write cycles.

Yes, you build it into optane memory

>Is there any way to replicate this with actual ram?
Yes, it's called a Ramdisk. Linux supports it out of the box. Windows requires additional software.

ZFS does this better than anything else with ARC and l2arc

i was not asking for ramdisk nigga i was asking for more cache in ram, i found a tool called supercache it has a 10 day trial i wil ltry it

this wouldnt work because of the limit of pcie bus

Ah, Linux does that by default.
Windows, well....you found a solution.

They should upgrade his hat to an i9 now

kay

They already sell these and (like 6 years ago) it was over 100 dollars just for the doohicky to plug all the ram into

It's a shame they never priced it reasonably. It was a pretty cool idea.

asus rog computers come with a ramdisk and a ramcache.

It's like barely noticeable with my ddr42800 ram and a evo860 ssd

but really unreliable

congrats i only have a lenovo and i want to see if i can make a difference in speed of my hdd, its already shortstroked

search for ramdisk cards

There must be a purpose for this, can anybody tell me what it is though?

Why would I buy this if I have an nvme?

>marketers don't want you to know what you're buying, because you'll fill in the blanks; human psychology thing, honestly these professional liars should be taken out to gulags and shot, anyways, that's why they don't say it. They want you uninformed or misinformed.

And how do you think you get get guys to shoot you in the gulags? With marketing/propaganda!

Those guys are cockroachs, they will always be around and the will always win.

>PCI-E
>WHAT IS PCI-E SSD
Lel mate stop talking about shit you have no idea about. The only reason why RAM is blazing fast is because it interfaces with the CPU directly, not through a bridge.
>PCI-E RAM
Easily joke of the week top kek

Will I notice a performance difference if I plug a USB 2.0 into my DIMM or do I need to use 3.0?

>The only reason why RAM is blazing fast is because it interfaces with the CPU directly, not through a bridge.

>The only reason

Most retarded post I've seen here all morning. Well done.

Noice damage control fucktard

RAM as virtual flash card:
ebay.de/b/NetApp/bn_21831538
(called netapp pisces but google cant find official site)

Lenovo exflash, connected directly to ddr3 dimm:
lenovopress.com/tips1141-exflash-dimms

Leave Sup Forums.

Optane is weird as fuck. There is no explanation why one shouldn't just buy m.2 SSD like Samsung 950 Evo. "Optane might be better in the future". Haha, with Intel? Prepare for Optane V2 with different connectors and an USB dongle.

The fastest modern NVMe/PCIE SSDs don't saturate an x16 PCIe3.0 slot afaik.

>tfw forget to stop namefagging

faster than SSD, slower than RAM, persist. Basically what SSDs were for HDD before.

You wouldn't

It's slower than your nvme SSD

>delusional

SSD's to HDD's was an order of magnitude change.

This is like going from a 7200rpm HDD to a 10,000rpm HDD, and it still isn't beating the faster SSD's, either.

Guess what, people said the same shit to SSD five years before, too.

Optane isn't nearly as revolutionary as SSDs were. I have a 2008 Intel SSD (Sata 2 lol) and it's still faster than slow-ass HDD. Optane isn't even that great compared to other SSDs. Especially seeing as the durability is atrocious.

well, usually some stupid people should take the bait and waiting their money on trial shits so regular people can enjoy the superior product some years later.

You're sure not convicning me to run out and buy an Optane(tm) Module(r) for my Z270 motherboard and i3/i5/i7 Intel(tm) CPU.

Reminder that for only $500 you can buy two 500GB 960-EVOs, RAID-0 them, and get 1TB with ~6.5GB/s sequential read and ~4GB/s sequential write.

But why would you do that when the money goes to Samsung and not Intel?

that's existed for years, battery backed up ram disks aren't anything new