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  • ikjadoon - Monday, March 16, 2020 - link

    It's the same every year: until Optane finds a *large* addressable market, it'll have low-volume, high-premium pricing. Enterprise & datacenter niches (a niche within a niche!) aren't 'large' enough in the world of NAND.

    Consumer software has clearly not caught up for anything useful at high QD1. Nada. Zero. Nothing. Useless. Don't even bring bloated vaporware, i.e., Star Citizen.

    The only options I see for Optane to grow are because of its insanely good endurance and nothing about QD1:

    1. High-end storage for videographers. RED sells 2013-era MLC-based RED SSDs that crap out quite often due to their relatively low endurance & massive write demands.
    https://twitter.com/mkbhd/status/12268971083069235...
    https://www.cinema5d.com/whats-inside-a-red-mini-m...

    RED SSDs retail $2400 for 960GB, while inside it's stuffed with off-the-shelf ancient Crucial m500 drives. At that price point ($2.50/GB), Optane looks like a goddamned bargain.

    2. "Small" embedded storage solutions for handheld game-consoles: not because of QD1, but Optane rules the read/write roost at 16 GB / 32 GB. At 64 GB, traditional NAND parallelization becomes more viable.

    3. Ultra-high-end SD/microSD cards (if 3D-XPoint can be miniaturized and made efficient): some photographers will buy it. Again, not related to QD1 whatsoever, but the incredibly high endurance + the excellent read/write speeds at low capacity sizes.

    The whole H10 debacle has only made Optane look worse, by pairing it in a crazy RAID with QLC. These things only sell because 1) they're the default config, 2) they're deceiving because you can say it's got an "Optane" SSD, when it's really 99% QLC and 1% Optane, and 3) H10 is probably cheaper to OEM/ODMs than a proper high-end SSD.
  • ikjadoon - Monday, March 16, 2020 - link

    Phones, while enticing, don't fit the Optane game—but maybe some "Gaming RGB 7" Monstrosity" could sell it.

    Nobody wants a 16 GB / 32GB phone anymore. At 64 GB, NAND is already fast enough that nobody will notice the difference.

    The *only* future on an Optane-based phone w/ large market share seems like...computational photography? But it's only going to be a somewhat larger buffer: RAM is already commonplace at 6 GB (sans iPhones) with high-end phones (the ones that could sustain a somewhat pricier Optane drive) already at 10 GB to 16 GB of RAM.

    I do hope Optane sticks around long enough to be worth the investment. Z-NAND seems like a small evolution of SLC...
  • PaulHoule - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    It would be interesting to see a platform (possibly phonish) that is "all optane", that is, has no separate RAM and SSD. It would need a lot of cache, maybe even eDRAM or a small stack of HBM. It would "boot" instantly, quickly go to a no-power sleep mode, etc.

    As for H10, it also seems to me that Optane would be an ideal solution for some of the conundrums around SSD design. SSDs need some place to store data structures (mapping tables) and also content that hasn't been committed to the SSD. Optane might be a better choice than DRAM for this role, it would save the need for capacitors to protect the temporary storage.

    Of course storage vendors don't care if consumers lose their data because they know consumers will just blame Microsoft for everything.
  • Veedrac - Monday, March 16, 2020 - link

    Optane has a really simple win condition with their DIMMs: beat RAM. If with next gen's doubling of layers and later further process refinement they figure out a way to sell a 64 GB DIMM for a bit over $100, and then they support it across most of their product line, it will make a lot of sense for a lot of people.
  • name99 - Monday, March 16, 2020 - link

    You make money through a profit coming or a profit going --- charge for the razor blades OR the razor handle, but not BOTH.
    Or to quote another wall street saying "Bulls make money, bears money, pigs get slaughtered"

    Intel decided to charge a lot for both the Optane DIMMs AND the few specific Xeons that support them. And then is amazed that this shrinks the market to almost nothing!

    If they'd had the brains to put Optane support on every CPU they ship, they'd be able to start growing the market as at least a few people would try installing maybe one Optane DIMM, just to see if that helped drastically speed up compile times or some other task.
  • vFunct - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Databases are the ideal application for Optane. They need fast random access and persistence. Optane crushes everything else for databases.
  • FunBunny2 - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    dang it. I thought I alone had figured that out! may be we can get a multi-million consultancy with Oracle?
  • vFunct - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Kinda surprised that people haven't figured out that Optane's strength is bit-level random-accesses - not even block level.

    The people suggesting this would be good for gaming or media streaming have no idea what random access really is.

    Databases are it for Optane, There isnt anything else for Optane.
  • FunBunny2 - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    "Optane's strength is bit-level random-accesses - not even block level."

    but... and it's a big butt, OS support for direct memory-to-memory processing, bypassing all those registers/caches/buffers is needed. not to mention an ISA that is based on that notion. there have been such cpu, more or less, in the past. but load/store of RISCy designs have been held sway for nearly a couple of decades. processor/OS protocol of block I/O has to go. gonna take some engineers with mighty big gonads to pull that off.
  • Joe.Blobers - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Your comment about SSD tech make sense. However keep away your remark about Star Citizen.

    Best 45$ I ever spend on any game, released or crowdfunded.
    +1.2 million individual bacekrs (not registred account which is double that number) do enjoy current Alpha (yes with bugs and crash).
    Have a good day.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Is Star Citizen that one game Chris Roberts was trying to make a few years ago? It has been a really long time since I've heard anything about it. Shouldn't it be out of development at this point and available as a retail product?
  • Joe.Blobers - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Trying? +500 devs, 5 studios, Alpha 3.8.2 and 3.9 delivered by end of March. That for Star Citizen (MMO) with quarterly patch. The solo part ala Wing Commander is Squadron 42 and do have a Beta planned to start by end of this year.
    Of course those not able to handle true Alpha should not consider it as polished and finished, it is not but yet a lot of fun with features not in any others triple-A.

    Talking about SSD specifically, it is close to mandatory to use an SSD (currently 50GB of data). Not an Optane, any SSD will do it.
  • edzieba - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Ah, it's like the early days of SSDs all over again. First there were a niche datacentre/HPC thing at exorbitant cost, then you had a handful released for the consumer market at exorbitant cost (remember the dodgy JMicron drives, and the X25-E at @$12/gb for a mere 30GB drive?). Now, SSDs are ubiquitous and cost/gb is 1% of that a mere decade later.
  • jbanko70 - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    what do you think about this one? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/compare/Seagate_Iro...
  • 8lec - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Unfortunately camera companies are not interested in giving their customers a great deal. All cine cameras are priced ridiculously high so are their accessories. Sure they do cost more to manufacture, and that's because they aren't standardised. Chinese brands such as Smallrig have started to kinda mass produce some accessories but until the big production companies will not adopt them, they will not reach perfection and will not be considered professional tools (they are 99% there.). There's a ton of snakeoil in the cine market.

    All this said, what I'm trying to get at, the expensive camera manufacturers such as arri red and cannon don't give a shit about upgrading unless the need is absolutely visible. If it works for them and their, mostly artistic, userbase they will not fix it and will continue to reap those massive profits.

    There's also the mentality amongst the video shooters and the clients, that more expensive is more better and if you are doing any sort of commercial work / bug budget feature films, you are expected to spend a lot; even if it's not the wisest decision.
  • 8lec - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Big* not bug. sorry
  • watzupken - Monday, March 16, 2020 - link

    It is quite difficult for Optane to do well, especially in recent years where RAM and NAND prices are low. I don't deny there are benefits to using Optane, but it is generally exclusive to Intel machines which are not as popular as they used to, and cost a lot. Optane have almost no foothold in the retail/ consumer space as well due to cost, high power consumption (high heat output), and no noticeable improvements to most users like me.
  • Magichands8 - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Price, price, price... it all comes down to price... and capacity. The technology is terrific and as a prosumer that wants what Optane has to offer I'm willing to pay a significant premium for its advantages but the prices as they are are ridiculously high and the capacities ridiculously low. Maybe someday Intel will actually do something with the technology but after all this time I'm not holding my breath. They've spent many years and billions of dollars developing this advanced technology only to essentially do nothing with it. Glad I'm not a stock holder because this debacle makes wonder about the quality of the company's leadership. What they should do is sell all of Optane to AMD. They'd do something with it.
  • Fataliity - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    I think the next generation of Optane will be leaps and bounds better.

    If im not mistaken, Micron's end of the design is on 90nm, while Intel's end of design is on about 14 or 22nm. So once Micron shrinks their side down to 20-ish nm, it should also improve performance and maybe cost too. It honestly looks like Micron didn't believe in it from the beginning, and just used old outdated fab machines to make it as a "test" run.

    Regardless, with Micron in full control, I think the future is bright. I see them optimizing price substantially, to around DRAM pricing, and having broad support from both Intel and AMD and ARM. Intel's problem, was making it exclusive lock-in.
  • Magichands8 - Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - link

    Well, I truly hope that's the case. Will definitely keep an eye out for developments.

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