How does desktop M.2 SSD with Optane work?

[whiskytangofoxconn]

I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos and I'm still confused.

I have a Dell Precision 3420 SFF that came with a E3-1220 v5. I recently purchased an E3-1245 v6. I read online that the machine needed a BIOS update for E3 v6 CPUs to work. I updated the BIOS and the E3-1245 v6 CPU works fine. So that's where I am at: I have a machine that supports Optane, I have an empty M.2 slot and I'm shopping for an M.2 ssd.

What confuses me is the pricing and descriptions I see online between DC optane, desktop optane, nvme ssd with optane buffer, etc. I would love DC persistent DIMM optane but I'm pretty sure that is not at all supported on a Dell Precision 3420 machine. If it is, I'd love to know.

The SSD's that have Optane buffers, for example I saw a 512gb nvme ssd with a 32gb optane "buffer". Is that 512+32= 544gb total (or 512 unformatted), or is it really 480gb plus the 32gb buffer? Is the 32gb buffer accessible as a separate storage device/partition (similar to RAMDISK) or is it tied via software (or hardware) to the M.2 SSD? What does the buffer do and what controls it?

I am going to be running YOLO object ID on this machine. I'm looking for an M.2 SSD (500-ish gb) to store recently used files that need to be more accessible than spinny HDD however the data will be large enough that with the machine's 64gb memory, I can't put/keep it in RAMDISK.

When I see Intel SSDPEL1K100GA01 Optane DC P4801X 100GB Solid State Drive - M.2 (for $280), will that even work in this Dell Precision 3420 machine? When I see Intel Optane H10 512 GB Solid State Drive - M.2 2280 Internal - PCI Express (PCI Express 3.0) will that help me or will I be bus-limited by the M.2 connection?

I just see prices all over the place and since I don't understand what exactly Optane is, I don't know if I need/want it or not. Thanks for any pointers or tips to any online resources, videos, etc. to help me understand it. I Googled and couldn't find anything with keywords Optane and YOLO object identification.

 

[skorpioskorpio]

Yea I have pretty much these same questions. The built on Optane buffered NAND devices, from my understanding, are meant to be OEM only devices for laptops, and my assumption would be that they are essentially like the 16 and 32GB caching devices that just so happen to also have some NAND on the same stick. So same restrictions apply, basically Kaby Lake or newer and intended to work via RST, and not really generic devices. This would be my guess anyway given how they are structured, always 16 or 32GB Optane + some level of NAND in addition, seems like a repurpose of the caching device to a more specific identifiable market, since the original product seemed to be largely a solution to a question nobody was asking with limitations nobody was interested in dealing with.

the M.2 P4801 on the other hand would seem to be a more generic purpose product. Everything I've read seems to indicate that it just gets seen by a system as an NVMe storage device. It's kind of positioned along side the M.2 905P which is basically a larger enthusiast version of a P4801 and the 900p, 905p and p4800s which are the PCIe encased versions of these products. So given their product "family" association this would seem to indicate that these M.2 (NVMe) devices are positioned as mostly plugin NAND replacement devices, though the fact that they are 22110 devices and not 2280 devices is a little concerning since that would make them incompatible with most built-on NVMe slots. Is this just a packaging issue or was this specifically done to prevent interchangeability? Given that almost any slot capable of supporting a 22110 device would likely also support a 2280 device (but not the other way around) it wouldn't seem to offer Intel any sort of competitive advantage if they are indeed logically interchangeable with NAND.