I'm really curious to see what kind of real world latency improvements this would provide over a more conventional MLC/TLC/QLC only SSD. It potentially be great for a boot drive.
the performance and write endurance on these qlc devices is an abomination, and you and i know that these things will not sell. there is zero reason for these drives to exist. end of story. EDIT: people thinking these will be affordable, these know this is intel's puppet optane. it will come at a price. that defeats the purpose of qlc entirely.
actually no it isnt XD. tlc can now fully saturate pcie3x4 speeds, and at the time tlc had only sata 3 and m.2 speeds to go by, and they could fully saturate those lanes. qlc can "not" do this. this makes that argument invalid.
From my understanding tlc can't saturate the speeds on its own but the slc cache can for long enough in most cases. That being said tlc did get a lot better over time and I don't doubt that qlc will get much better over time as well.
Yeah, if priced right, this could make a really good gaming drive, too, as the boosted IO hits from the Optane cache could load common libraries and maps as fast or faster than many more expensive SSD's. Even QLC has decent sequential transfer rates.
I have a Tin for that (fishing). These may not not make much sense generally but for thinl light laptops with only one m2 slot, they should be great. I can also see the capacity's (going up) and price dropping a lot over the next years. Builtin, sealed laptops , like phones.
I don't quite share your thoughts about QLC - if the pricing is appropriate. Things like the intel 660p 1TB/2TB imho provide quite excellent value (but yes, for write heavy scenarios they aren't what you want). That said, it seems like intel is trying to push these H10 ssds as somewhat of a high-end solution - faster than tlc nvme ssds, and if I'd have to guess the price will reflect this. And imho that's not going to fly, you'd be near certainly better off with a ordinary nvme tlc ssd like a 970 Evo for example. The H10 might be faster for some things, but overall a tlc nvme ssd will offer much more consistent performance. FWIW I think intel is still desparately trying to find a market for optane in client space, which doesn't really exist (now if you could get something along the lines of optane persistent memory there, that would be interesting...). Unless intel is trying reverse revenue tactics on these H10, I don't think they are really going to sell... But I'll reserve final judgment until I've seen the reviews.
In terms of total bytes written, the endurance of current TLC, and even QLC SSDs are in fact, better than MLC SSDs of yesteryear.
Controller advancement is one thing, but the main reason is the capacity has ballooned since then.
An article mentioned how initially SSD vendors aimed for higher and higher writes, until they realized consumers don't need that much and cheaper drives were preferred.
I'm sceptical of the pricing until I'll see it. Yes intel qlc nand is definitely priced to move (they'd have gotten more favorable reviews on the 660p if the initial pricing there would have undercut all TLC-based SSDs, regardless if they are nvme or sata, like it does now). But optane, I've yet to see prices on any product which would really make this a seller.
Yea, that's because right now it costs a lot to produce.
Someone said the 900P/905P drives barely make any money for Intel.
They really need to keep moving it in an area where high end prices are justified. The DC PMMs make a lot of sense.
Whatever they are doing with the H10 seems to have resulted in sequential performance boost.
Ideally, looking at how NAND, despite the terribly slow media does so well with 1-2GB DRAM buffers do as an end product, they have a chance with Optane to replace that buffer. I expect in the future we'll see more integration and eventually get there. 16GB is not small if you think of it that way.
Two storage devices bifurcating an M.2 PCIe slot and a layer of caching drivers that only run with specific Intel chipsets. Sounds like a recipe for data loss.
I do wonder if going this route is really the best option. Doubling up on controllers for the optane having dram as well and all coupled with slow qlc nand that is going to tank the performance when the drive runs out of cache
Darn, I'm really disappointed. I wish it acted like one drive, with smart caching rather than two drives on one PCB with Intel's proprietary sauce over it. I think it would have been much more useful, like a next-gen SSHD. I'm not against QLC at all, especially with SLC schemes and adding Optane on top would have been great.
A unified drive could also use the Optane part instead of DRAM for persistent block translation data, saving on both BOM and idle power usage. At least on a budget drive, where the performance hit would be acceptable.
That would require all caching logic to be moved to a controller (cost + inflexibility + lack of configurability & system awareness) vs. doing the caching logic on the CPU.
The NVMe standard has enough features that it would actually be possible to implement cache configuration and system awareness with standard commands, while still presenting a single pool of storage for systems that don't care. The main downside to the fully-integrated approach is that Intel would have to get back into the business of designing SSD controllers for the consumer market.
Yeah, you’d also get full bandwidth out of the device rather than the relatively silly ferrying of data the cpu would be doing back and forth to the same card.
This is nothing more than a very low effort product that squeezes the existing two device model onto one physical slot. A coherent product where the cache is integrated at the hardware would have been a much better device, but that wasn’t the design goal.
I'm of two minds. A unified solution would let it be installed into any system with a PCIe M.2 slot, but Intel might then require some particular chipset validation or similar tomfoolery in order for it to work at all. It's also then locked into whatever method of caching/etc that Intel sees fit to provide.
With it being two separate devices, provided your M.2 slot supports bifurcation you can use any third-party caching product including on a non-Intel or non-Windows system.
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more_ram - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
I'm really curious to see what kind of real world latency improvements this would provide over a more conventional MLC/TLC/QLC only SSD. It potentially be great for a boot drive.austinsguitar - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
the performance and write endurance on these qlc devices is an abomination, and you and i know that these things will not sell. there is zero reason for these drives to exist. end of story.EDIT: people thinking these will be affordable, these know this is intel's puppet optane. it will come at a price. that defeats the purpose of qlc entirely.
Kvaern1 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
That's what you said about TLC.austinsguitar - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
actually no it isnt XD. tlc can now fully saturate pcie3x4 speeds, and at the time tlc had only sata 3 and m.2 speeds to go by, and they could fully saturate those lanes. qlc can "not" do this. this makes that argument invalid.qlum - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
From my understanding tlc can't saturate the speeds on its own but the slc cache can for long enough in most cases. That being said tlc did get a lot better over time and I don't doubt that qlc will get much better over time as well.Jorgp2 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
That's what the Optane is for.Optane has insane write endurance, and with enough of a write cache it will take most of the brunt.
The QLC is basically a victim cache in this situation, and even then they have a lot of overprovisioning.
I personally wouldn't use this as an OS drive, it's better suited for WORM storage.
Samus - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
Yeah, if priced right, this could make a really good gaming drive, too, as the boosted IO hits from the Optane cache could load common libraries and maps as fast or faster than many more expensive SSD's. Even QLC has decent sequential transfer rates.dromoxen - Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - link
I have a Tin for that (fishing). These may not not make much sense generally but for thinl light laptops with only one m2 slot, they should be great. I can also see the capacity's (going up) and price dropping a lot over the next years. Builtin, sealed laptops , like phones.goldenatom - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Sorry, what you keep saying just isn't supported by the available data.mczak - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
I don't quite share your thoughts about QLC - if the pricing is appropriate. Things like the intel 660p 1TB/2TB imho provide quite excellent value (but yes, for write heavy scenarios they aren't what you want).That said, it seems like intel is trying to push these H10 ssds as somewhat of a high-end solution - faster than tlc nvme ssds, and if I'd have to guess the price will reflect this.
And imho that's not going to fly, you'd be near certainly better off with a ordinary nvme tlc ssd like a 970 Evo for example. The H10 might be faster for some things, but overall a tlc nvme ssd will offer much more consistent performance.
FWIW I think intel is still desparately trying to find a market for optane in client space, which doesn't really exist (now if you could get something along the lines of optane persistent memory there, that would be interesting...). Unless intel is trying reverse revenue tactics on these H10, I don't think they are really going to sell... But I'll reserve final judgment until I've seen the reviews.
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
In terms of total bytes written, the endurance of current TLC, and even QLC SSDs are in fact, better than MLC SSDs of yesteryear.Controller advancement is one thing, but the main reason is the capacity has ballooned since then.
An article mentioned how initially SSD vendors aimed for higher and higher writes, until they realized consumers don't need that much and cheaper drives were preferred.
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Also, an analyst is saying Intel wants to move both Optane and QLC, so they'll price the combined product competitively. That's good news.It'll most likely end up in laptops where they'll get whatever discounts they can get, but if it comes to retail, it'll sell if priced attractively.
mczak - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
I'm sceptical of the pricing until I'll see it. Yes intel qlc nand is definitely priced to move (they'd have gotten more favorable reviews on the 660p if the initial pricing there would have undercut all TLC-based SSDs, regardless if they are nvme or sata, like it does now). But optane, I've yet to see prices on any product which would really make this a seller.IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Yea, that's because right now it costs a lot to produce.Someone said the 900P/905P drives barely make any money for Intel.
They really need to keep moving it in an area where high end prices are justified. The DC PMMs make a lot of sense.
Whatever they are doing with the H10 seems to have resulted in sequential performance boost.
Ideally, looking at how NAND, despite the terribly slow media does so well with 1-2GB DRAM buffers do as an end product, they have a chance with Optane to replace that buffer. I expect in the future we'll see more integration and eventually get there. 16GB is not small if you think of it that way.
voicequal - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Two storage devices bifurcating an M.2 PCIe slot and a layer of caching drivers that only run with specific Intel chipsets. Sounds like a recipe for data loss.Shadowarez - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
I was thinking of this lol was going to buy a 2tb intel qlc to pair with my 800p 118gb optane drive.qlum - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
I do wonder if going this route is really the best option. Doubling up on controllers for the optane having dram as well and all coupled with slow qlc nand that is going to tank the performance when the drive runs out of cacheCheapSushi - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Darn, I'm really disappointed. I wish it acted like one drive, with smart caching rather than two drives on one PCB with Intel's proprietary sauce over it. I think it would have been much more useful, like a next-gen SSHD. I'm not against QLC at all, especially with SLC schemes and adding Optane on top would have been great.Hul8 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
A unified drive could also use the Optane part instead of DRAM for persistent block translation data, saving on both BOM and idle power usage. At least on a budget drive, where the performance hit would be acceptable.edzieba - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
That would require all caching logic to be moved to a controller (cost + inflexibility + lack of configurability & system awareness) vs. doing the caching logic on the CPU.Billy Tallis - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
The NVMe standard has enough features that it would actually be possible to implement cache configuration and system awareness with standard commands, while still presenting a single pool of storage for systems that don't care. The main downside to the fully-integrated approach is that Intel would have to get back into the business of designing SSD controllers for the consumer market.sor - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
Yeah, you’d also get full bandwidth out of the device rather than the relatively silly ferrying of data the cpu would be doing back and forth to the same card.This is nothing more than a very low effort product that squeezes the existing two device model onto one physical slot. A coherent product where the cache is integrated at the hardware would have been a much better device, but that wasn’t the design goal.
Anonymous Blowhard - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
I'm of two minds. A unified solution would let it be installed into any system with a PCIe M.2 slot, but Intel might then require some particular chipset validation or similar tomfoolery in order for it to work at all. It's also then locked into whatever method of caching/etc that Intel sees fit to provide.With it being two separate devices, provided your M.2 slot supports bifurcation you can use any third-party caching product including on a non-Intel or non-Windows system.