When it comes to 3D printing, the sky is the limit. As 3D printing technology continues to advance, applications can be as far reaching as airplane and automobile parts to medical devices and even anatomically correct, biocompatible models. Although 3D printing technology is developing at a rapid pace, the technology itself is not new. It emerged in the 1980s as a means of creating rapid prototypes. In recent years the applications for 3D printed models have evolved with the available hardware, software, and printable materials. Evolving technology, paired with the creative and innovative minds of scientists, engineers, and physicians, has been the launching pad for developments within 3D printing technology specific to healthcare. One way 3D printing technology is poised to create better patient outcomes is in creating an anatomically and patient-specific models to aid in surgery and medical procedures. With the capability to 3D ...
Intel recently unveiled its Optane Memory products last month, though the company has been co-developing its underlying memory technology with partner Micron for years now. The 3D Xpoint memory technology that Intel’s Optane Memory is built on has similar properties to DRAM in terms of random access speeds, though it’s non-volatile (retaining data when power is off). In short, it’s a new memory tier, a faster storage repository for most often used data and meta data, that resides between system memory (RAM) and the main storage subsystem. In the data center, Intel’s Optane SSD DC P4800X product offers a 5x to 8x performance lift in mixed read/write workloads, and an order of magnitude faster and more consistent response times. In data center applications, these characteristics can really accelerate website, application and database performance. However, in consumer client desktop and notebook PC applications, the current Optane Memory product’s value proposition is a bit more specialized.
Intel Optane Memory Module
Intel Optane Memory for PCs looks like the average M.2 gumstick and in fact plugs into an M.2 slot on Intel 200 series chipset motherboards (7th gen Kaby Lake or newer). However, it’s designed to cache slower storage volumes like hard drives, offering orders of magnitude faster response times and essentially enabling spinning media to perform more like a high performance SSD in many applications, from workstation and content creation workloads, to gaming, web browsing and even productivity apps. It does this by storing most frequently used data, meta data and access patterns on either a 16GB or 32GB Optane Memory stick, allowing the system to make far fewer trips to a much slower hard drive for data access.
Average mainstream users generally require quick bursts of performance for a system to feel snappy and responsive and that’s where Optane Memory comes into play, when coupled with cheap, bulk hard drive storage. How much faster is a system setup with Optane Memory? A lot faster and Intel lifted the embargo this week on Optane Memory benchmark results.
Intel Optane Memory Stick 32GB
HotHardware’s Marco Chiappetta put Optane Memory through its paces and the Before and After numbers are stark and impressive. With a standard 1 terabyte WD Black 7200 RPM hard drive, sequential transfers skyrocketed to 1.4GB/sec for reads, up from 160MB/sec or so on the bare HDD. Writes weren’t as dramatic for sequential transfers, scaling up from about 160 – 170MB/sec on the HDD, to 290MB/sec or so when coupled with Optane. However, random small file transfers -- the kind that are common for things like application load times and general system performance – were off the hook. Here Optane Memory offer 100 – 600X the performance when coupled with the hard drive, versus just the hard drive alone. However, those are just the synthetic benchmark.
In real-world uses cases, Windows 10 boot times on an Optane-infused system dropped to 14 seconds, versus 27 seconds with just a hard drive. Files searches in Windows improved to 16 seconds, down from 45 seconds, and game load times in some titles plummeted to under 10 seconds versus over a minute for the hard drive alone.
Windows 10 Boot Time With Optane and Without
These are the kind of tangible gains Optane Memory can offer for mainstream users. When you consider 16GB and 32 GB Optane Memory sticks will retail for $44 and $77 respectively, the value proposition to accelerate cheap, bulk hard drive storage is fairly compelling. Versus a standard NVMe SSD, an Optane/Hard Drive combination will trail. However, you can easily see PC OEMs driving cost out of systems with an HDD and Optane Memory together. This is just the initial play for Intel Optane Memory. Future higher capacity Optane SSDs will come to market as well and it will be interesting to see how Intel implements the technology in that scenario and what potential gains it may (or may not) bring.
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