For reads, with two DIMMs we can almost double the peak read bandwidth, from 6.4 GB/s with one DIMM to 12.4 GB/s with two. With six modules, the throughput would be ~38GB/s. Sequential reads on SSD and SCM with a warm buffer cache. The former puts non-volatile media directly in the DIMM slot, providing storage with extremely low latency, but requiring changes to BIOS and OS to address properly. Intel unveils Optane DC persistent memory DIMMs: 'This is a new class of storage' Intel announces what it calls a new tier of memory for memory-intensive workloads. What are the real benefits of data storage management software? PowerMax supports a memory today, with power-protected NVDIMMs. SCM will shine when it is used for latency-sensitive operations that cannot be hidden with batching and caching, such as logging. An Optane NVDIMM is about 28 times faster than an Optane SSD and 214 times faster than a SAS SSD. The figure below offers a birds eye view of how NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) works. These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. We can envisage PowerMax having fast and (relatively) slow SCM tiers formed from Optane DIMMs and SSDs, then slower NVMe flash SSDs and slower still bulk-capacity disk drives as the base in-array tier. Our read of this is that a Dell EMC new mid-range system is coming, to be called PowerSomething, with an upgrade path from the existing mid-range systems. Optane SCM has a significant edge over the SSD with respect to reads, and a small advantage in writes, provided you can afford six PM modules; otherwise, an SSD will deliver a higher write throughput. By: Carol Sliwa. While SCM is closer to the speed of DRAM than traditional storage media, DRAM is still faster, so advantages of DRAM caching are difficult to overlook. And while moving storage to compute is doable and useful when deployed correctly, it is expensive and requires a bit more ‘user interaction’ than the average architect is capable of providing (its much more complicated than simply plugging in the DIMM. Unlike DRAM, SCM is persistent in nature and retains data written to it across power cycles. It is also sometimes referred to as non-volatile storage . Persistent memory products have just begun hitting the market - this work all started back on DDRII bus designs. If you are running a small scale in-memory database, like Oracle, persistent memory can be the best option. With that in mind, we recommend AFA vendors consider the following in designing their external controller-based storage, server-centric software-defined storage (SDS) and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) architectures. This new class of memory technology has performance characteristics that fall between DRAM and flash characteristics.