In July 2022, Intel announced that the company was winding down its Optane division, effectively discontinuing the development of 3D XPoint memory that it has been marketing for a long time. Once viewed as a competitive advantage, the support for Optane has been removed from future platforms. However, Intel has announced plans to extend Optane shipments by another quarter amidst additional stock or significant demand from customers buying Optane DIMMs for their enterprises. Initially set to ship the final Optane Persistent Memory 100-series DIMMs on September 30, Intel extends this date by three months to December 29, 2023.

Intel states, "Customers are recommended to secure additional Optane units at the specified 0.44% annualized failure rate (AFR) for safety stock. Intel will make commercially reasonable efforts to support last time order quantities for Intel Optane Persistent Memory 100 Series."

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) provides some of the most authoritative and informative market-research into the PC graphics hardware industry. The firm just published a scathing editorial on the future of Intel AXG (Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics), the business tasked with development of competitive discrete GPU and HPC compute accelerators for Intel. Founded to much fanfare in 2016 and led by Raja Koduri since 2016; AXG has been in the news for the development of the Xe graphics and compute architecture, particularly with the Xe-HP "Ponte Vecchio" HPC accelerator; and the Arc brand of consumer discrete graphics solutions. JPR reports that Intel has invested several billions of Dollars into AXG, to little avail, with none of its product lines bringing in notable revenues for the company. Xe-LP based iGPUs do not count as they're integrated with client processors, and their revenues are clubbed with CCG (Client Computing Group).

Intel started reporting revenues from the AXG business since Q1-2021, around which time it started selling its first discrete GPUs as the Intel DG1 Xe MAX, based on the same Xe-LP architecture powering its iGPUs. The company's Xe-HPG architecture, designed for high-performance gaming, was marketed as its first definitive answer to NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. Since Q1-2021, Intel has lost $2.1 billion to AXG, with not much to show for. The JPR article suggests that Intel missed the bus both with its time-to-market and scale.

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."

Despite its technical advantages over NAND flash, Intel's Optane memory technology never really took off in the consumer space, largely due to its much higher costs. Based on details from Intel's SEC filings, it would appear that its corporate customers haven't been overly impressed either, as Intel filed a US$576 million loss in 2020 with regards to its Optane business.

As to if this trend continued in 2021, we're going to have to wait and see, but it looks like the losses are set to continue based on its revenue figures, according to Blocks and Files. With this in mind, it seems like Micron's exit from 3D XPoint memory isn't so hard to understand, as the technology is clearly too costly to make up for the benefits on offer, for most of its potential customer base. Transitions to higher-density 3D XPoint memory has also been slow, which might be yet another reason customers have shied away from using it, even as a caching solution in storage servers. It wouldn't surprise us if Intel moves on from Optane/3D XPoint memory in the near future, as the company seems to have shifted its focus firmly away from storage solutions.

Micron Technology, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Lehi, Utah, fab to Texas Instruments. The economic value for Micron from the sale is $1.5 billion, comprised of $900 million in cash from TI from the sales transaction, and approximately $600 million in value from select tools and other assets. Micron has sold some of these assets and will retain the remainder to redeploy to its other manufacturing sites or sell to other buyers.

Micron's Lehi, Utah, facility has been home to a highly skilled team with expertise in all aspects of advanced semiconductor manufacturing. TI will offer all Lehi site team members the opportunity to become employees upon the closing of the sale and intends to deploy its own technologies at the site. The sale is anticipated to close later this calendar year.

"Micron's Lehi, Utah, facility has a strong history of technology innovation and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing," said Micron President and CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Texas Instruments as it is an industry leader and truly values the talented Lehi team and the capabilities this site offers to deploy its technology effectively. We are greatly appreciative of the contributions that the Lehi team has made to Micron, as well as the collaboration and engagement Micron has had with the local community."

Total NAND Flash revenue for 1Q21 increased by 5.1% QoQ to US$14.82 billion, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, bit shipments rose by 11% QoQ, while the overall ASP dropped by 5% QoQ; hence, bit shipment growth offset the decline in the overall ASP. Although NAND Flash demand from notebook computer and smartphone manufacturers remained high, clients from the data center segment exhibited relatively weak demand, since this segment had yet to leave the state of NAND Flash oversupply. Contract prices for this quarter therefore still mostly showed a considerable QoQ drop. On the other hand, OEMs/ODMs of end products began to increase procurement of NAND Flash products from the second half of January onward because they noticed that the shortage of NAND Flash controller ICs was affecting the production of medium- and low-density storage products. Besides avoiding a possible supply crunch in the future, OEMs/ODMs were placing additional orders because they were preparing for a push to expand market share. On account of these developments, the overall NAND Flash demand surpassed expectations in 1Q21.

Micron and Intel started development on 3D XPoint memory technology back in 2012 and by 2015 Intel had announced their Optane branded lineup of storage products featuring the new memory. Micron estimated that the chips would be sold for half the price of DRAM but five times the cost of flash memory and started limited manufacturing at a jointly owned factory in Lehi, Utah. The new technology was proposed as the future of memory but with Intel being the only major manufacturer of products that dream has not been realized. While the Intel Optane lineup of products has been generally well-received the high-cost and limited use cases have limited its adoption.

Micron has been dissolving its partnership with Intel over the years with their joint 3D XPoint development program ending in 2019 and Micron exercising their right to acquire Intel's share of the factory. This left Intel in the position of purchasing 3D XPoint wafers from Micron for use in their Optane products however this wasn't enough to fully utilize the facilities production and as such Micron has consistently been losing money on the factory. Micron has decided to sell the factory and is now in discussions with potential buyers the most likely being Intel to take over the facility. Intel has announced that their strategy for Optane products will remain the same and that supply will continue.

Intel SVP for architecture, graphics, and software, Raja Koduri, tweeted the first picture of the Xe HPC scalar compute processor multi-chip module, with its large IHS off. It reveals two large main logic dies built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process from a third-party foundry. The Xe HPC processor will be targeted at supercomputing and AI-ML applications, so the main logic dies are expected to be large arrays of execution units, spread across what appear to be eight clusters, surrounded by ancillary components such as memory controllers and interconnect PHYs.

There appear to be two kinds of on-package memory on the Xe HPC. The first kind is HBM stacks (from either the HBM2E or HBM3 generation), serving as the main high-speed memory; while the other is a mystery for now. This could either be another class of DRAM, serving a serial processing component on the main logic die; or a non-volatile memory, such as 3D XPoint or NAND flash (likely the former), providing fast persistent storage close to the main logic dies. There appear to be four HBM-class stacks per logic die (so 4096-bit per die and 8192-bit per package), and one die of this secondary memory per logic die.

Intel and Micron have signed a new agreement for the production of 3D XPoint memory. As currently the only source of 3D XPoint memory solutions, Micron will get a significant increase in cash flow coming from Intel for the memory production. While Intel and Micron ended their partnership on 3D XPoint memory, they have signed a new contract for the production and supply of new 3D XPoint wafers to Intel. This shows that the demand for 3D XPoint memory is strong, so Intel needs production capacity to deliver the memory, and Micron is the obvious choice.

Previously, Intel sold its ownership of Lehi fab based in Utah, which was manufacturing the 3D XPoint memory solutions, so it was left to Micron to use. However, they signed a new deal and now Micron is in charge of manufacturing and addressing the supply issues for Intel's future Optane products. The new agreement comes with changed pricing and forecast of the sales, so Intel is likely paying more cash to Micron this time.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced a breakthrough in nonvolatile memory technology with the introduction of the world's fastest SSD, the Micron X100 SSD. The Micron X100 SSD is the first solution in a family of products from Micron targeting storage- and memory-intensive applications for the data center. These solutions will leverage the strengths of 3D XPoint technology and usher in a new tier in the memory-to-storage hierarchy with higher capacity and persistence than DRAM, along with higher endurance and performance than NAND.

"Micron's innovative X100 product brings the disruptive potential of 3D XPoint technology to the data center, driving breakthrough performance improvements for applications and enabling entirely new use cases," said Micron Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana. "Micron is the only vertically-integrated provider of DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint solutions in the world, and this product continues the evolution of our portfolio towards higher value solutions that accelerate artificial intelligence capabilities, drive faster data analytics and create new insights for our customers."

Intel today at a press event in South Korea announced their plans for future product launches in the memory spaces. Optane is the name of the carriage Intel is pulling here - there's no novelty about that - and the company will be pushing a second generation release of Optane enterprise SSDs and Optane DC Persistent Memory modules. Most interesting for us down-to-earth PC enthusiasts, though - the market launch of 144 Layer QLC NAND in 2020, which should bring even lower pricing to NAND-based devices. Later, the company also plans to launch 144 layer TLC NAND solutions.

The new Optane modules apparently make use of first-generation 3D XPoint memory still - the love child of the now defunct Intel-Micron partnership. Intel's new Optane DC Persistent Memory products will materialize in codename Barlow Pass modules, with a release window around the likes of Cooper Lake (14nm) and Ice Lake (10nm) server processors scheduled for 2020. It seems that Intel's only consumer solution based in Optane - the Optane Memory H10 two-in-one SSD - is a lonely child effort which won't be joined by the previously-planned Optane Memory M15 (a dedicated cache drive for systems with mechanical-based storage, which are already on their way out) and Optane SSD 815P (which would only offer 118 GB of storage, clearly too little for current data storing trends in the overall market.

With its IMFlash Technology joint-venture with Micron coming to an end, Intel is finding itself with manufacturing challenges for its memory businesses. The company holds IP to both 3D NAND flash and its own invention 3D XPoint memory, which it believes will succeed NAND flash in performance and endurance. The company is now mulling to move manufacturing of 3D XPoint to a foundry in China. Intel currently manufactures this exotic new memory at an IMFlash Technology facility in Utah. Intel's $1.3 billion stake-sale to Micron pushes it out of this facility.

Under the terms of the stake-sale, Micron allows Intel to continue to manufacture 3D XPoint at IMFlash for a year, after which it must manufacture it elsewhere. The transfer of stake is scheduled for October 31st, which means Intel's manufacturing in Utah will continue till October 2020. In the meantime, Intel is planning to move manufacturing to its Fab 68, located in Dalian, China. Intel is now manufacturing 1st and 2nd generation 3D Xpoint, while its 3rd generation is under development, and was earlier slated for initial manufacturing at Intel's Fab 11X in New Mexico, USA. It's not known if Intel has changed these plans. 3rd generation 3D XPoint hits mass-production in 2021.

The Intel-Micron divorce in the wake of the former's exit from the joint Im Flash venture has taken some strange turns. However, it seems that Micron is looking to take the entire business out of Intel's hands and keep the manufacturing capacity that was jointly developed and invested in all for themselves, offering Intel anywhere from $1.3B to $1.5B for their stake on the venture - including associated debt of the IMF venture to Intel, which amounts to a cool $1B of that amount. This means that Intel's stake in the venture is being valued at $300 to $500 million.

The only remaining factory that is being operated by both parties is located in Lehi, Utah, and exclusively fabricates 3D XPoint memory, which has only been turned to a consumer and professional product by Intel. The acquisition from Micron means they'll have to fulfill Intel's 3D XPoint orders until 2020, and that they'll be investing on the factory's capacity to produce 2nd generation 3D XPoint for their own product portfolio, as well as post-3D XPoint technologies.

Intel today revealed details about Intel Optane memory H10 with solid-state storage - an innovative device that combines the superior responsiveness of Intel Optane technology with the storage capacity of Intel Quad Level Cell (QLC) 3D NAND technology in a single space-saver M.2 form factor. "Intel Optane memory H10 with solid-state storage features the unique combination of Intel Optane technology and Intel QLC 3D NAND - exemplifying our disruptive approach to memory and storage that unleashes the full power of Intel-connected platforms in a way no else can provide," said Rob Crooke, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group.

Combining Intel Optane technology with Intel QLC 3D NAND technology on a single M.2 module enables Intel Optane memory expansion into thin and light notebooks and certain space-constrained desktop form factors - such as all-in-one PCs and mini PCs. The new product also offers a higher level of performance not met by traditional Triple Level Cell (TLC) 3D NAND SSDs today and eliminates the need for a secondary storage device.

Intel and Micron Technology have parted ways from the IMFlash Technology joint-venture that set out to win the emerging non-volatile memory market with limited success. The two are now locked in numerous legal skirmishes arising from the disjointing of a major high-technology alliance, as employees migrate to either company. One such former Intel engineering-manager is in the middle of a legal spat, named Doyle Rivers. Rivers jumped ship from Intel to Micron Technology, allegedly carrying with him a large amount of trade-secrets and IP related to Intel's 3D XPoint memory and Optane products.

Intel Tuesday secured a preliminary injunction from the US District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division, which tells Rivers to not possess, use, or disclose any confidential Intel information related to the company's 3D XPoint or Optane products, including personnel working on those products; and to return any such possessions to Intel. Rivers' defense claims Intel gets nothing from this injunction. In a telephonic interview with The Register, Daniel Sakaguchi, a partner at Alto Litigation in San Francisco, representing Rivers, stated "Mr. Rivers doesn't have anything to return," adding "We continue to take the position that Intel's claims are greatly exaggerated."

The Intel-Micron partnership pertaining to memory technologies is drawing to a close, with Micron today announcing they'd be acquiring remaining interest in IM Flash Technologies. IM Flash Technologies is the literal embodiment of the Intel-Micron partnership, and Micron acquiring the entire stake of it means that Intel is left out of any investment/development of 3D XPoint memory.

Micron expects to pay approximately $1.5 billion in cash for the transaction, dissolving Intel's non-controlling interest in IM Flash, and the two companies will independently drive their own future technology roadmaps. Based on prior agreements, Micron will sell 3D XPoint memory wafers to Intel for up to a year after close.

Intel today introduced 1.5 TB variants of the Optane 905p SSD that implements 3D XPoint memory. The drive comes in half-height PCI-Express 3.0 x4 add-on card, and 15 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with U.2 interface. Both variants offer sequential transfer rates of up to 2,600 MB/s reads, with up to 2,200 MB/s writes. Random access speeds are rated at up to 575,000 IOPS reads, with up to 550,000 IOPS writes. A function of its sheer capacity and 3D XPoint, endurance for these drives is rated at 27.37 PB (bytes written). The drives retain the feature set of their less capacious siblings, including 256-bit AES native encryption. The company didn't release pricing.

Toshiba at the Flash Memory Summit announced that it's developing 3D XL-Flash technology - an approach towards the creation of low-latency, 3D NAND that can take on the surging Optane and 3D XPoint memory technologies. Toshiba says the new approach to low-latency NAND could bring latency values down to just 1/10 of current consumer, TLC NAND pricing.

The bet here is on economies of scale - a revised NAND architecture and deployment will still be able to take advantage of the huge fabrication capacity that Toshiba already enjoys (and Samsung, with its Z-NAND, similar in purpose to what Toshiba want to do with XL-Flash), thus avoiding the need for technology and production ramp-up that brought Optane's pricing up. Toshiba will be using its BiCS flash technology, but XL-Flash will be - at least at first - deployed in SLC implementations, so as to improve performance (7 microseconds program time against QLC's 30 microsecond). Of course, this will bring storage density down, but remember the target here is offering Optane-like performance and equal or better density at lower pricing.

Intel is one of the few semiconductor companies that manufactures a majority of its products on its own silicon fabrication foundries. The breadwinner for the company continues to be CPUs, and a majority of its revenues continue to come from its client-computing group (CCG). CPUs, like GPUs, are required to be built on the latest silicon fabrication process to keep up (or catch up) with Moore's Law. Intel is plagued with severe technological roadblocks toward advancing its foundry process from 14 nanometer (nm) to its next step, 10 nm. In its latest Q2-2018 earnings call, the company confirmed that the 10 nm node won't put out before Q4-2019, even as rival AMD's CEO announced that its first 7 nm processors will be up for purchase by the end of 2018 (a year ahead with a more advanced process, on paper). Analysts are beginning to paint a very grim future for Intel's foundry business.

The prospects for Intel going fabless, at least for its cutting-edge products, is higher than ever. Analysts, speaking with Taiwan-based industry observer DigiTimes, mentioned that there is speculation of Intel scaling down its foundry business. Something like this, if true, could hint at the company looking for foundry partners with newer silicon-fabrication nodes at a more advanced stage of development (eg: GlobalFoundries 7 nm) to manufacture its processors, while relegating its own foundries to manufacture less complex products such as chipset, NAND flash, 3D XPoint memory, 5G PHYs, etc. Fancy a Core processor made by GloFo in the great state of New York?

Micron and Intel today announced an update to their 3D XPoint joint development partnership, which has resulted in the development of an entirely new class of non-volatile memory with dramatically lower latency and exponentially greater endurance than NAND memory.

The companies have agreed to complete joint development for the second generation of 3D XPoint technology, which is expected to occur in the first half of 2019. Technology development beyond the second generation of 3D XPoint technology will be pursued independently by the two companies in order to optimize the technology for their respective product and business needs.

The two companies will continue to manufacture memory based on 3D XPoint technology at the Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) facility in Lehi, Utah.

Intel is giving finishing touches to a new wave of Xeon Scalable processors based on its new "Cascade Lake" silicon. One of its first parts is a 28-core chip with a 6-channel DDR4 memory interface, support for 3 DIMMs per channel, resulting in 18 DIMM slots per socket. Its integrated memory controllers support a theoretical maximum of 3.84 TB of memory. The best part? The memory needn't be DRAM-based.

With its next-generation of enterprise processors, Intel is introducing support for Optane Persistent Memory. This 3D X-point based memory module has a performance footprint between NAND flash SSDs and volatile DRAM; while being close enough to the latter to work as primary memory. Its USP is persistence - the ability to not lose data after power loss or reboot; allowing large data centers to quickly power down/up nodes in response to load, without wasting several dozen minutes in repopulating DRAM with data from a hibernation image. Optane Persistent DIMMs come in capacities of up to 512 GB. This is simply 512 GB of 3D X-point memory wired to a special on-DIMM controller that interfaces with standardized DDR4 interface.

Intel's Optane products, based on the joint venture with Micron, have been hailed as the next step in memory technology - delivering, according to Intel's own pre-launch slides, a mid-tier, al-dente point between DRAM's performance and NAND's density and pricing. Intel even demoed their most avant-garde product in recent times (arguably, of course) - the 3D XPoint DIMM SSD. Essentially, a new storage contraption that would occupy vacant DIMM channels, delivering yet another tier of storage up for grabs for speed and space-hungry applications - accelerating workloads that would otherwise become constrained by the SATA or even NVMe protocol towards NAND drives.

Of course, that product was a way off; and that product still hasn't come to light. The marriage of Optane's density and speed with a users' DRAM subsystem is just wishful thinking at best, and the dreams of pairing DRAM and 3D Xpoint in the same memory subsystem and extracting the best of both worlds remains, well... A figment of the imagination. But not according to some retailers' websites, though. Apparently, the usage of Intel's Optane products as DRAM memory has already surfaced for some vendors - Dell and HP included. How strange, then, that this didn't come out with adequate pomp and circumstance.

Gigabyte, in a bid to further differentiate itself from its competitors' products, has decided to start bundling Intel's high-performance, 3D XPoint memory-based Optane drives with select AORUS motherboards. The initiative, which is available for the company's Z370 Aorus Gaming 7-OP and Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming WIFI-OP (where the OP suffix denotes the Optane bundle) delivers Intel's 32 GB Optane module at a price that's lower than the sum of its parts.

The Z370 Aorus Gaming 7-OP, for example, comes with an MSRP of just $269, $20 more than the non-OP version of the same motherboard - and can now be had for the same $249. This means you'll snag a full 32 GB Optane module for free with this bundle. The Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming WIFI-OP delivers a slightly less sweet deal, but it's still interesting: it's available at an MSRP of $214, while its non-Optane-equipped equivalent is available for $164.99 (this means the usually $74 Optane module will set you back a much more manageable $32). And have I mentioned these are absolutely beautiful motherboards?

Ahead of its launch, a curious-looking Optane 905P PCI-Express add-in card (AIC) SSD, bearing model number SSDPED1D960GAX1, showed up on Newegg, confirming its imminent launch. The model listed offers 960 GB of storage based on 3D XPoint memory, and unless we're mistaken, an illuminated shroud, unlike its predecessor, the Optane 900P.

The capacity here is the star-attraction, as the Optane 900P only comes in capacities up to 480 GB (that's 280 GB and 480 GB), which had been the biggest complaint of its target audience, PC enthusiasts. The added capacity should also increase the drive's endurance numbers, although the Newegg listing puts out no performance numbers from the manufacturer. The Optane 905P 960 GB commands a US $1,602 price, for now.

At the Open Compute project Summit, Intel previewed their upcoming Optane SSD DC P4801X, the company's true M.2, Optane-based SSD for enterprise deployments. Intel has managed to reduce the footprint for their flagship, U.2 form-factor Optane SSD DC P4800X, while increasing the available NAND capacity from their current caching solutions (800p and 900p Optane SSDs).

The new, upcoming M.2 SSD's controller features a 7-channel architecture to improve performance as much as possible, deployed in 375 GB drives, through use of seven quad-die packages of 3D XPoint memory. For the moment, there are no pricing or performance metrics to be talked about. However, this solution marks the first in a general consumer-available form-factor, and could be prototyped for a future, mainstream-hitting Optane SSD.