Optane is coming to an end: Intel is shutting down one of the most exciting technologies of the last decade

Looks like the end of the Intel Optane memory division is just around the corner. Inside the tough Q2 2022 earnings report: In the second quarter of 2022, we began the liquidation of our Intel Optane memory business.

In addition, Intel’s earnings report also notes that the company takes a commission of $559 million for “Deterioration of Optane Stocks“This trimester. That is, units that remained unsold and production materials that were discarded.

If we take these points at face value, it appears that Intel is preparing to wind down its Optane memory business and development of its associated 3D XPoint technology.

Of course, there are many nuances to the Optane name and product line as Intel has several Optane products including “Optane Memory”, “Optane Persistent Memory”, and “Optane SSDs”.

But it looks like Intel is shutting down the entire Optane business unit, not just the Optane Memory product. Or so the AnandTech environment confirmed: Intel is pulling out of the entire Optane business.

First announced by Intel in 2015, 3D XPoint memory technology was billed as a convergence between DRAM and solid state storage.

This unique bit-addressable memory uses phase transition technology to store data, rather than electron trapping like NAND technology.

As a result, 3D XPoint offers incredibly high reliability, in the order of millions of writes, as well as very high random read and write performance.since your data doesn’t have to be organized into relatively large chunks.

Intel, for its part, has used 3D XPoint as the basis for two product lines. For its data center customers, the company offered Optane non-volatile memory, which packaged the 3D XPoint into DIMM modules as a partial replacement for traditional DRAM modules.

At that time, Intel has also used 3D XPoint as the basis for several storage products, including high performance SSDs for servers and clients. and as a smaller high-speed cache for use with slower NAND SSDs.

However, the unique properties of 3D XPoint have also challenged Intel since the technology’s launch. Even though 3D XPoint was designed to be scalable through layering, the production costs of 3D XPoint were exorbitant.

Thus, despite Intel’s attempts to offer a product that could cover both areas, 3D XPoint was not as good as DRAM or NAND in the respective tasks.which made it difficult to sell Optane products.

As a result, Intel has been losing money on its Optane business for most of its business life.including hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020.