The end of the DAX experiment [LWN.net]

The end of the DAX experiment

Posted May 3, 2019 14:41 UTC (Fri) by luto (subscriber, #39314)
In reply to: The end of the DAX experiment by Cyberax
Parent article: The end of the DAX experiment

“Emulator?” A DIMM with a battery is an excellent DAX device. I suspect it’s considerably faster than Optane.

to post comments

The end of the DAX experiment

Posted May 3, 2019 18:55 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

It's an emulator, emulators can be faster than the real hardware. I was hoping for much more from Optane, but for now it appears to be just slightly cheaper than DRAM while being much slower.

The end of the DAX experiment

Posted May 3, 2019 20:26 UTC (Fri) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]

I think that it’s not an emulator in any respect. It’s not like Optane is somehow the real thing and battery-backed DRAM is pretending. The battery approach was also first.

In some sense, Optane is an emulator. The DIMM protocol was designed to model the way that DRAM works. I assume that Optane goes a bit out of its way to speak the same protocol.