Well-known hardware bloggers now have access to engineering samples of Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids Processor and Intel’s 3rd Generation Optane DC Persistent Memory “CrowPass” Module. Unfortunately, future hardware engineering samples do not always work like commercial components. This seems to be the case here. However, there are some important points to mention.
Hardware bloggers, leakers, and large Intel clients have been playing with Intel’s 4th generation Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids CPU engineering samples for some time. So it’s not surprising that Intel has been shipping QVL samples for these processors for several months. Yuuki_Ans (Opens in a new tab)A well-known hardware collector with access to rare parts, was the first to obtain Intel’s next-generation Optane DC persistent memory module, codenamed CrowPass, which uses a DDR5 interface. The fact that bloggers got these modules is important because it proves that Intel is sampling the 4th generation Optane DC persistent memory modules on the client of choice. Therefore, it is likely that the company has no plans to discontinue technology at this time.
It was even a big deal to get 4th generation Optane DC persistent memory modules, but Yuuki_Ans tried to test them and posted the benchmark results to him. twitter (Opens in a new tab)..
Intel’s Optane DC Persistent Memory module is not the most popular product on the market. However, they accommodate specific server workloads and increase memory capacity closer to the CPU, well below the price of a suitable traditional memory module. As a result, there are not many reviews of Optane DC persistent memory modules on the web.Still, we compared Legit Review results (Opens in a new tab) Conversion of Intel’s 1st generation Optane DC persistent memory “Apache Pass” to the result of Intel’s 3rd generation Optane DC persistent memory “Crow Pass” by Yuuki_Ans.
Intel Optane DCPM module performance with CrystalDiskMark
| 3rd Generation Optane PM “Crow Pass” | 1st Generation Optane PM “Apache Pass” | 3rd Generation Optane PM “Crow Pass” | 1st Generation Optane PM “Apache Pass” | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| read | read | describe | describe | |
| Sequential 1M | Q1T1 | 2248.5 MB / s | 3634.8 MB / s | 3084.28 MB / s | 1803.37 MB / s |
| Random 4K | Q1T1 | 282,226 IOPS | 437,539 IOPS | 298,875 IOPS | 471,482 IOPS |
| Data by | Yuuki_Ans | LegitReviews | Yuuki_Ans | LegitReviews |
After all, Intel’s 3rd generation Optane DC PM module running on Intel’s Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids processor is slower than Intel’s 1st generation Optane DC PM module paired with a 2nd generation Xeon Scalable Cascade Lake CPU. ..
Of course, we’re only dealing with the results from one benchmark using pre-production hardware, so we’ll take them with a grain of salt. In addition, companies occasionally provide firmware and microcode for pre-production components. These firmware and microcode intentionally degrade performance so that competitors can evaluate future hardware performance before release.
In any case, the key point is that Intel is sampling the 3rd generation Optane DC Persistent Memory module and plans to bring this technology to the next generation of Xeon Scalable’s “Sapphire Rapids” platform.
