Where Do Optane DIMMS Fit In?

An over-simplified look at Storage/Memory options for Servers. 

When you need more memory, NVM, and are willing to sacrifice some speed, Optane DIMMS make sense. They should be available early in 2018?

• DRAM DIMM alone is fastest and has lots of suppliers
• NVDIMM-N is available at high cost if NVM is needed
• Optane DIMMS allow more Random access memory at lower cost. its NVM. It is slower than DRAM.
• SSDs are improvement on HDD. Optane SSDS are fastest (latency) SSDs available
• Optane DIMMS take off in volume if the cost is significantly lower than DRAM DIMMS.

Option	Speed	Cost	Notes
NAND NVMe SSD	+	$	Fast enough for most
Optane SSD	++	$$	Fastest SSD Around
Optane DIMM	++++	$$$	Assume minimal DRAM
DRAM only	++++++	$$$$	Fastest, but not  NVM
NVDIMM-N	+++++	$$$$$	NAND+DRAM