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Intel Memory Announcements

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Intel has made a number of processor and memory announcement over the last few months. Many of these announcements include uses for the company’s Optane (3D XPoint) memory. Let’s look at some of these recent memory/storage announcements for enterprise and client applications.

Intel launched its second-generation Xeon Scalable Processor (formerly known as Cascade Lake) for servers. The announcement was partially a response to AMD’s 32-core Epyc server CPUs. The Intel SP product has 28-cores and supports 56 threads. Intel’s Xeon SP Platinum 9200 series has 56 cores and 112 threads and requires up to 400 W of power. Intel also announced new FPGAs under a new Agilex brand, previously known as Falcon Mesa (these are the first new family of FPGAs since Intel acquired Altera in 2015. The company also discussed its Optane DC persistent memory.

Intel is incorporating support for its Optane DC persistent memory with the new Xeon processors. According to the company, by moving more data into memory, this breakthrough innovation allows users to unleash faster insights from their data and delivers up-to 36TB of system-level memory capacity when combined with traditional DRAM in an eight-socket system. This represents a 3-times increase in system memory capacity compared with the previous-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor

The new memory and storage solutions available from Intel include:

• Intel Optane DC persistent memory brings storage-class memory capacity to the Intel Xeon Scalable platform (note that when used in memory mode, this memory is effectively not persistent, https://thessdguy.com/intels-optane-two-confusing-modes-part-2-memory-mode/)

• Intel Optane SSD DC D4800X (Dual Port) combines the performance of Intel Optane DC SSDs with the data resilience required by mission-critical high-availability enterprise IT applications. Dual port capability adds redundancy to the data path to deliver continued data access in the event of failures or service operations and upgrades.

• Intel SSD D5-P4326 (Intel QLC 3D NAND) is an addition to Intel’s first-to-market PCIe QLC NAND SSDs for the data center with the Intel Ruler (EDSFF form factor). Using 64-Layer QLC technology (4 bits/cell), the product family delivers large affordable capacities to read-intensive cloud workloads. Additional cost optimizations on the Intel SSD D5-P4326 enable it to help accelerate HDD displacement in warm storage. The D5-P4326 SSD is shown in the image below.

Image from Intel Product Introduction

Intel also announced its Optane H10 SSD that includes it Optane (3D XPoint) memory, combined with quad-level cell NAND memory earlier in 2019.  This product is apparently focused on client OEM customers.  The Optane memory replaces DRAM as cache memory and comes in an M.2 form factor with 4PCIe 3.0 lanes.  Storage capacities are 256 GB NAND with 16 GB of Optane, 512 GB with 32 GB of Optane and 1,024 GB with 32 GB of Optane.  Sequential read performance is up to 2,400 MB/s and write performance of up to 1,800 MB/s. There are separate controllers for the NAND and Optane memories and Intel says the H10 can use both simultaneously.

The figure below shows the layout of the H10 SSD (https://www.extremetech.com/computing/289371-intel-releases-specs-for-optaneqlc-nand-h10-memory). 

Image from ExtremeTech

Intel is leveraging its Optane memory for client and enterprise applications.  In particular, it is tying enterprise applications to its updated Xeon server processors to provide higher performance and lower cost storage options than using DRAM alone.

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