Thursday, July 28th 2022
Intel to Shut Down Optane Memory Business, Retire 3D XPoint Memory
Intel's pioneering 3D X-point Memory, which sought to bridge the gap between non-volatile Flash memory, and volatile DRAM, stares at an untimely demise, as Intel plans to wind up both its Optane Memory business, as well as further development of 3D XPoint. The industry's reception of Optane Memory has been lukewarm; while cheap NVMe SSDs have driven Optane out of the client segment. Intel in its Q2-2022 Financial Results release, announced that it has initiated the winding down of the Optane Memory business, and that the company is incurring a $559 million "Optane Memory Impairment" charge this quarter.
3D XPoint faces technological competition from the latest crop of 3D-stacked Flash memory, which is achieving over 200 layers of density; while the latest generation of PCI-Express Gen 5.0 controllers enable data-rates in excess of 10 GB/s, and certain enterprise-relevant features of PCIe Gen 5. In a statement released to AnandTech, Intel says: "We continue to rationalize our portfolio in support of our IDM 2.0 strategy. This includes evaluating divesting businesses that are either not sufficiently profitable or not core to our strategic objectives. After careful consideration, Intel plans to cease future product development within its Optane business. We are committed to supporting Optane customers through the transition."
Source:
AnandTech
3D XPoint faces technological competition from the latest crop of 3D-stacked Flash memory, which is achieving over 200 layers of density; while the latest generation of PCI-Express Gen 5.0 controllers enable data-rates in excess of 10 GB/s, and certain enterprise-relevant features of PCIe Gen 5. In a statement released to AnandTech, Intel says: "We continue to rationalize our portfolio in support of our IDM 2.0 strategy. This includes evaluating divesting businesses that are either not sufficiently profitable or not core to our strategic objectives. After careful consideration, Intel plans to cease future product development within its Optane business. We are committed to supporting Optane customers through the transition."
73 Comments on Intel to Shut Down Optane Memory Business, Retire 3D XPoint Memory
I used an Optane H20. I also am probably the only person to get the Optane side of it usable on a B550 motherboard - by accident.
Apparently the QLC side was the second set of lanes, the Optane side was the first. The M.2 slot did not support bifurcation. I was planning on using it as a 512gb SSD only, as a boot drive, and I could only see the Optane side - at 32gb. :banghead:
Anyways, I replaced it and it is now in my laptop on which I type this, as an SSD only as it is not compatible with the chipset! Almost as bad as Apple's NAND only SSD.
Honestly, though, the only real advantages of Optane are random WRITES and latency, at a higher cost. Tom's Hardware did a test comparing it to an enterprise-grade Samsung SLC drive, and the Samsung had better random reads and better sequentials. It was also cheaper.
This is in contrast to the NAND vs HDD comparison - NAND was so much better that it didn't go away, but was iterated upon until it became cheap.
There is a reason people buy TLC or even QLC instead of MLC and SLC drives. People don't really need the performance and endurance of the better drives.
Also supposedly there is XL-FLASH that is fancy name for SLC based SCM (Storage Class Memory) enterprise drives.
www.storagereview.com/review/dapustor-x2900p-scm-ssd-review
www.storagereview.com/news/kioxia-fl6-scm-ssd-released
Unfortunately availability is even more nonexistant that Optane itself.
So for now it seems the only way is to snag one of the U.2 Optane variant or by some miracle and SLC drive from Toshiba etc.
But with prices like $8,500 for 512 GB Optane on DIMM, they couldn't possibly get anywhere.