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Wait Less. Do More.
March 3, 2018
Can your PC really learn, and get more efficient over time?
In business, efficiency is everything. You hire and train employees with the expectation that their skills will improve, and they'll become more efficient as time goes by. Why shouldn't your office technology do the same? What if, rather than slowing over time, your office PCs could learn, adapt, and get more efficient too?
That's the premise behind one of Intel's newest memory products: Intel® Optane™ memory.
Intel® Optane™ memory is described as “a smart system accelerator that unleashes high-performance responsiveness while affordably maintaining mega-storage capacity.” Per Intel®, Optane™ memory's intelligent software “automatically learns your computing behaviors to accelerate frequent tasks and make everything you do noticeably faster.”
In other words, with Intel® Optane™ memory, your office PCs could learn, adapt, and get more efficient.
Speed and storage at reasonable costs
It's worth noting that Intel® Optane™ may not be for everyone. For small business owners who need to balance performance and cost, however, it offers an attractive alternative to larger, more expensive SSD storage devices. In a built-to-order PC, such as an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Tower PC for example, the cost to add 16GB of Intel® Optane™ memory is roughly comparable to a 256GB SSD. While SSD still holds a slight performance edge, Optane's value is in its ability to offer “SSD-like” performance with a traditional, spindle drive. And with traditional hard drives comes the freedom to utilize much larger storage capacities at significantly lower costs than comparably-sized SSDs.
Finding the Optane™ sweet spot
At this point, you're probably asking yourself, “What does this mean for me and my business?” You're wondering if Intel® Optane™ makes sense for your environment, and if it's worth the cost. To answer that question, let's first take a quick look at some basic Optane requirements: 7th Generation Intel® Core™ processor-based system with a Windows® 10 64-bit operating system. Additionally, certain requirements such as RAID configurations or custom disk images could require additional IT resources and costs.
So, what is the sweet spot? PCs with Intel® Optane™ memory are ideal for small businesses – particularly those in the 5-50 PC range with limited customization needs. And, since the technology is software-based, there's no operating system reinstallation necessary or additional hardware knowledge required.
Also, it's worth noting that Intel® Optane™ memory works well even with systems with smaller amounts of RAM. Why, you ask? When your computer runs out of DRAM memory, the CPU uses Intel® Optane™ memory as virtual memory. Given Optane's position of being able to bridge the gap between the system's storage and traditional memory, it allows everything to work more smoothly and efficiently.
If you're in that sweet spot, it means you can wait less and do more. PCs boot faster, web browsers launch faster, and you can search and find files faster. It also means you can save large files with virtually no lag, and see your email application of choice launch even faster.
Bringing it all together
In short, this technology intelligently accelerates new 7th & 8th Generation Intel® Core™ processor-based systems while affordably maintaining mega-storage capacity, to deliver a responsive computer experience with short boot times, fast application launches, extraordinary gaming, and responsive browsing.
In other words, a high-capacity storage device coupled with Intel® Optane™ memory offers the best of both worlds: high speed acceleration, and affordable, large storage capacity.
That's efficiency that makes business sense.
Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Core, nVMe, and Optane are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
