https://www.anandtech.com/show/12828/intel-launches-optane-dimms-up-to-512gb-apache-pass-is-here
I just read about his and I was wondering how much slower would this be than normal dimms for rendering? Or would the size make up for being a little slower?
I wanted to post this in the PhoenixFd forum, but somehow I cannot post there. Would this be good for PhoenixFD simulations?
Bye,
Jan
Is this memory or HDD?
It’s memory, but uses optane/ x-point instead of RAM. The benefit comes with the fact it’s non-volatile so if there is a power loss it retains it’s contents. The downside is only the latest xeon are supported, plus a new chipset, and latency is about double that of DDR4 RAM. Optane RAM was suggested a while ago but has only just been announced.
The target audience are enterprise databases, the point being, changes in memory to the database don’t need to be commited as often to slower ssds - so performance is increased. Plus, data doesn’t need to be loaded back into RAM after restarting the database/server.
Vray sees medium benefits from fast RAM, phoenix benefits a lot. Even with the larger memory sizes, phoenix is likely to suffer performance wise. Finally optane memory needs to be specifically programmed for and expect it will be eye wateringly expensive to begin with.
**Edited, because phone autocorrect optane to octane 
Thank you for the answer.