It seems that the top could also be in sight for Intel’s beleaguered Optane reminiscence enterprise. Tucked inside a brutal Q2’2022 earnings launch for the corporate (extra on {that a} bit later at present) is a really curious assertion in a bit speaking about non-GAAP changes: In Q2 2022, we initiated the winding down of our Intel Optane reminiscence enterprise. As nicely, Intel’s earnings report additionally notes that the corporate is taking a $559 Million “Optane stock impairment” cost this quarter.
Past these two objects, there isn’t a additional details about Optane inside Intel’s earnings launch or their related presentation deck. We now have reached out to firm representatives looking for extra data, and are ready for a response.
Taking this stuff at face worth, then, it might appear that Intel is making ready to close down its Optane reminiscence enterprise and improvement of related 3D XPoint know-how. To make certain, there’s a excessive diploma of nuance right here across the Optane identify and product strains right here – which is why we’re on the lookout for clarification from Intel – as Intel has a number of Optane merchandise, together with “Optane reminiscence” “Optane persistent reminiscence” and “Optane SSDs”. None the much less, inside Intel’s earlier earnings releases and different monetary paperwork, the entire Optane enterprise unit has historically been known as their “Optane reminiscence enterprise,” so it might seem that Intel is certainly winding down the Optane enterprise unit, and never simply the Optane Reminiscence product.
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Following our request, Intel has despatched out a brief assertion on the Optane wind-down. Whereas not providing a lot in the best way of additional particulars on Intel’s exit, it does affirm that Intel is certainly exiting your complete Optane enterprise.
We proceed to rationalize our portfolio in assist of our IDM 2.0 technique. This consists of evaluating divesting companies which might be both not sufficiently worthwhile or not core to our strategic targets. After cautious consideration, Intel plans to stop future product improvement inside its Optane enterprise. We’re dedicated to supporting Optane clients by means of the transition.
Intel, in flip, used 3D XPoint as the premise of two product lineups. For its datacenter clients, it provided Optane Persistent Reminiscence, which packaged 3D XPoint into DIMMs as a partial substitute for conventional DRAMs. Optane DIMMs provided larger bit density than DRAM, and mixed with its persistent, non-volatile nature made for an fascinating providing for techniques that wanted large working reminiscence units and may benefit from its non-volatile nature, equivalent to database servers. In the meantime Intel additionally used 3D XPoint as the premise of a number of storage merchandise, together with high-performance SSDs for the server and consumer market, and as a smaller high-speed cache to be used with slower NAND SSDs.
3D XPoint’s distinctive attributes have additionally been a problem for Intel because the know-how launched, nonetheless. Regardless of being designed for scalability through layer stacking, 3D XPoint manufacturing prices have continued to be increased than NAND on a per-bit foundation, making the tech considerably costlier than even higher-performance SSDs. In the meantime Optane DIMMs, whereas filling a singular area of interest, have been equally as costly and provided slower switch charges than DRAM. So, regardless of Intel’s efforts to supply a product that would crossover the 2 product areas, for workloads that don’t profit from the know-how’s distinctive skills, 3D XPoint ended up being neither pretty much as good as DRAM or NAND of their respective duties – making Optane merchandise a tough promote.
In consequence, Intel has been shedding cash on its Optane enterprise for many (if not all) of its lifetime, together with lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} in 2020. Intel doesn’t escape Optane income data frequently, however on the one-off events the place they’ve revealed these numbers, they’ve been nicely within the pink on an working revenue foundation. As nicely, experiences from Blocks & Information have claimed that Intel is sitting on a major oversupply of 3D XPoint chips – on the order of two years’ of stock as of earlier this 12 months. All of which underscores the issue Intel has encountered in promoting Optane merchandise, and including to the price of a write-down/write-off, which Intel is doing at present with their $559M Optane impairment cost.
Consequently, a possible wind-down for Optane /3D XPoint has been within the tea leaves for some time now, and Intel has been taking steps to change or curtail the enterprise. Most notably, the dissolution of the Intel/Micron IMFT three way partnership left Micron with possession of the only real manufacturing fab for 3D XPoint, all of the whereas Micron deserted their very own 3D XPoint plans. And after producing 3D XPoint reminiscence into 2021, Micron ultimately bought the fab to Texas Devices for different makes use of. Since then, Intel has not had entry to a excessive quantity fab for 3D XPoint – although if the stock experiences are true, they haven’t wanted to supply extra of the reminiscence in fairly a while.
In the meantime on the product facet of issues, winding-down the Optane enterprise follows Intel’s earlier retreat from the consumer storage market. Whereas the corporate has launched two generations of Optane merchandise for the datacenter market, it by no means launched a second technology of client merchandise (e.g. Optane 905P). And, having bought their NAND enterprise to SK Hynix (which now operates as Solidigm), Intel not produces different forms of consumer storage. So retiring the remaining datacenter merchandise is the logical subsequent step, albeit an unlucky one.
Intel’s Former Optane Persistent Reminiscence Roadmap: What WIll By no means Be
General, Intel has opted to wind-down the Optane/3D XPoint enterprise at a essential juncture for the corporate. With their Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs launching this 12 months, Intel was beforehand scheduled to launch a 3rd technology of Optane merchandise, most significantly their “Crow Move” 3rd technology persistent DIMMs, which amongst different issues would replace the Optane DIMM know-how to make use of a DDR5 interface. Whereas improvement of Crow Move is presumably full or almost full at this level (given Intel’s improvement schedule and Sapphire Rapids delays), truly launching and supporting the product would nonetheless incur vital up-front and long-term prices, requiring Intel to assist the know-how for one more technology.
In lieu of Optane persistent reminiscence, Intel’s official technique is to pivot in the direction of CXL reminiscence know-how (CXL.mem), which permits attaching risky and non-volatile reminiscence to a CPU over a CXL-capable PCIe bus. This could accomplish lots of the identical targets as Optane (non-volatile reminiscence, giant capacities) with out the prices of creating a wholly separate reminiscence know-how. Sapphire Rapids, in flip will probably be Intel’s first CPU to assist CXL, and the general know-how has a much wider trade backing.
AsteraLabs: CXL Reminiscence Topology
Nonetheless, Intel’s retirement of Optane/3D XPoint marks an unlucky finish of an fascinating product lineup. 3D XPoint DIMMs have been a novel concept even when they didn’t fairly work out, and 3D XPoint made for ridiculously quick SSDs because of its large random I/O benefit – and that’s a function it doesn’t appear to be some other SSD vendor goes to have the ability to totally replicate any time quickly. So for the stable state storage market, this marks the top of an period.
