from the but-can-you-whack-knuckles-with-it dept.
Intel has announced a new ruler-shaped form factor for SSDs that it says will enable 1,000 terabytes in a 1U-sized server rack. Other upcoming products include dual port SSDs and SATA SSDs:
Intel plans to release both 3D NAND SSDs and Optane SSDs in the Ruler form factor "in the near future".
Dual Port Intel Optane SSDs and Intel 3D NAND SSDs are designed to replace SAS SSDs and HDDs and, with new storage technologies, deliver more IOPS, more bandwidth and lower latency than SAS SSDs. Dual port Intel SSD DC D4500, D4502 and D4600 Series are due for release in Q3 this year.
Finally Intel is introducing the SSD DC S4500 and S4600 Series for data centres. These combine "a new Intel-developed SATA controller, innovative SATA firmware and the industry's highest density 32-layer 3D NAND". Intel reckons these will be attractive products to those intending to preserve legacy infrastructure.
Also at Techgage.
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Intel has announced new 3D XPoint "Optane" solid state drives at two capacities:
The Intel Optane SSD 900P will come to market in two capacity sizes, 280GB and 480GB. The series uses two form factors, 2.5" U.2 and half-height, half-length add-in card (AIC). This will start to get confusing so look closely. The 280GB will have two 2.5" models on launch day. One comes with a standard U.2 cable and the second comes with an M.2 to U.2 adapter cable. The 480GB will not ship in a 2.5" form factor until a later date. It will ship in the add-in card form factor starting today.
Regardless of the form factor or capacity size, all Optane SSD 900P drives deliver up to 2,500 MBps sequential read and 2,000 MBps sequential write performance. This is lower than some of the other high-performance NVMe SSDs shipping today, but we will address that in the next section. The drives also deliver up to 550,000 random read and 500,000 random write IOPS performance. This is class leading performance, but there is more to the story.
3D XPoint memory performance is closer to the speed of DRAM than NAND used in SSDs. SSD marketing numbers show maximum performance that comes only at high queue depths. Most of us rarely surpass queue depth 4 and the faster the storage, the less likely you are to even build data requests. This memory addresses the problem with performance at usable workloads.
In the chart [here] we have the three fastest Intel consumer storage products from different market segments: SATA SSD, NVMe SSD, and Optane NVMe SSD. We've also added the new Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB, the fastest consumer hard disk drive shipping today.
Pricing is $390 for 280 GB, and $600 for 480 GB. That's $1.25/GB for the larger drive, compared to $2.34/GB for the 32 GB Optane Memory M.2 2280 and the launch price of $4.05/GB for the 375 GB Optane SSD DC P4800X (Reviewed here).
3D XPoint is a non-volatile memory/storage technology.
Previously: First Intel Optane 3D XPoint SSD Released: 375 GB for $1520
Intel Announces Optane 16 GB and 32 GB M.2 Modules
Intel Announces "Ruler" Form Factor for Server SSDs
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:15PM (3 children)
...for the budget of a small country, I'm guessing...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:52PM (2 children)
Most estimates of human memory equivalent storage are under 100 TB. The highest estimate I have ever run into was 3PB, or 3,000 TB (and I think that's way overblown, various reasons.)
So 3U... and you could reasonably have enough long-term storage to support a mind as we know it. Presuming, of course, than you have solved the algorithmic, architectural, and temporal conundrums.
And no particular reason to stop at 3U, either. Well, other than whoever's wallet is funding said rack.
Ah, the future. I like living in it. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:59AM (1 child)
I think compression/encoding efficiency are vastly more important than any arbitrary "storage equivalent". How many images can your brain hold? Does it hold them intact like a computer, or reconstruct them on the fly from much less data? Efficiency is a hallmark of evolved systems, and computer tech is incredibly new and unevolved in comparison.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday August 10 2017, @05:26PM
You're looking at it wrong, I think.
Our evolved ability to store images is imprecise, somewhat arbitrary, and subject to crosstalk with other storage. I would give a lot to be able to actually recall an image correctly. An AI will be able to do that. This is highly desirable. If it costs more storage, fine, add more storage. AIs could share storage; we can't. Etc.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:32PM (1 child)
Larger rapidly accessible collections of pr0n.
The motivation behind ZFS was to enable larger collections of pr0n.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:41PM
We'll quickly be creating enough disk capacity to keep most of Earth's women employed making porn 24/7.
The problem is how few consumers are willing to pay them to provision those drives and fill them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:54PM
You've become a pirate!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @10:23PM
Would love to somehow put this in a workstation. I've seen my M.2 sticks throttle, so I'm left with my PCIe card Intel (working great!). U.2 is an option for now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @11:41PM
Isn't this basically Intel saying "we are making this existing technology in a new form factor, called 'ruler?'"
Granted it's good to know and I guess newsworthy, but nothing really groundbreaking or new. It would be like Apple saying, "the next iPhone will be available in Orange as well."
Maybe I'm missing something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:36AM (1 child)
In spite of touting a new form factor, the announcement doesn't say what the size is. The accompanying photo is captioned
However Intel describes the DC S4600 as '2.5" 7mm [intel.com]' so it's not actually in the new form factor.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:37PM
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11702/intel-introduces-new-ruler-ssd-for-servers [anandtech.com]
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11702/ruler_form_factor_for_intel_ssds_press_briefing_final_5.png [anandtech.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]