Intel® Optane™ persistent memory is an innovative memory technology that delivers a unique combination of affordable large capacity and support for data persistence. It can help businesses fuel innovation with increased capacity and unique memory modes, lower overall TCO while maximizing VM densities, and increase memory security with automatic hardware-level encryption.
While both Intel® Optane™ persistent memory (PMem) and Intel® Optane™ SSDs use the same Intel® Optane™ memory media, they are very different products. Intel® Optane™ persistent memory is in a DIMM package, operates on the DRAM bus, can be volatile or persistent, and acts as a DRAM replacement. Intel® Optane™ SSDs, on the other hand, are strictly used for fast storage residing in standard NAND package models (AIC, M.2, U.2, EDSFF,…), reside on the PCIe bus using the NVMe* protocol, are always persistent for storage reasons, and act as a fast storage replacement. Additionally, Intel® Optane™ SSDs differ from standard Intel® 3D NAND SSDs by offering; breakthrough performance at all (and differentiated at low) queue depths (up to 6x faster than NAND), consistently responsive under load (up to 63x faster than NAND under write pressure), high quality of service (up to 60x better than NAND), and very high endurance (up to 20x more total terabytes written than NAND).
An NVDIMM (non-volatile dual in-line memory module) is hybrid memory that retains data during an outage. NVDIMMs typically integrate non-volatile NAND flash with DRAM and a dedicated backup power on a single memory subsystem. While it does offer persistency, it is usually a more expensive system as you need just as much NAND storage as your DRAM module plus the addition of the battery backup sub-system. There is also a delay in saving and restoring states when an outage has occurred. Additionally, if the battery is not maintained or goes bad you lose the backup capability. With Intel® Optane™ persistent memory, you have instant persistency with no additional components needed, no worry about changing a battery, no additional storage necessary so your cost is lower, and no performance hit on restore.
Historically, memory and storage products have been limited by density, performance, and cost. Intel® Optane™ persistent memory fills the gaps by affordably expanding memory capacity and adds low-latency access to persistent data, combining the best of memory and storage traits into one transformative product. It can help businesses fuel innovation and crunch more data and crush more decisions while lowering overall TCO, and keep your data secure with automatic hardware-level encryption.
See how businesses are innovating with Intel® Optane™ persistent memory.
Read how Intel, SAP, and Accenture deliver a solution for high-performance, high-capacity, low-cost memory.
See why CERN calls Intel® Optane™ PMem "a breakthrough in computing technology".
With Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost) and Intel® Optane™ persistent memory, TACC can now offer researchers new ways to solve enduring problems.
Learn how leading data center system and cloud service providers are delivering workload-optimized solutions to help you accelerate business transformation with Intel® Optane™ persistent memory technology.
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