Intel’s axed Optane biz spurts out mixed bag of new SSDs From the rotting corpse that is Intel's axed Optane memory business come a pair of new 3D XPoint-based SSDs for servers and workstations. Only one of them seems like an upgrade from drives released two years ago. The semiconductor giant didn't even bother announcing the new Intel Optane SSD DC P5810X Series, instead leaving …
"The semiconductor giant didn't even bother announcing the new Intel Optane SSD DC P5810X Series, instead leaving their discovery to those trolling the company's labyrinthine Ark product database."
Should be:
"The semiconductor giant didn't even bother announcing the new Intel Optane SSD DC P5810X Series, instead leaving their discovery to those trawling the company's labyrinthine Ark product database."
These appear to bog standard enterprise grade SSDs. The Optane branding seems mis-leading considering all the previous Optane marketing has been for a sort of permanent RAM" thingy. Has this Intel Optane business previously been selling stuff not directly associated with the Optane RAM product? Why is not just marketed as an Intel SSD? The article certainly doesn't appear to question this or explain it in any way. Have I missed something here?
"The Optane branding seems mis-leading considering all the previous Optane marketing has been for a sort of permanent RAM" thingy."
No. "Optane" brand meant Intel/Micron generated flash that had (and still has) superior latency to any traditional NAND flash. Optane also doesn't degrade in performance even when the drive is full; it doesn't require TRIM (or Secure Erase) that NAND relies on.
You are speaking of NVDIMM's (DDR4 socketed Optane) which - in a limited way - still is the highest performing local storage there is because the memory is by far the fastest interface of a CPU. Only Intel and Micron produced Optane storage, and Intel paired this with only Xeon platforms to win more server sales. (somewhat like limiting RDRAM to Intel chipset back in the Pentium 4 days, with no clear benefits for users at much higher prices. We all know what became of that)
Aside from NVDIMM's, Intel 7th-8th gen CPU chipsets' software RAID feature (RST) had support for a small (16GB-64GB) PCIe M.2 Optane module to act as a r/w cache for a single HDD. At this point many users already opted for SSD storage in which Optane produced minimal to no benefits with added complexity. Cost of the module+HDD drove people to just buy an SSD.
Intel also sold PCIe cards (900p and others) and later on proper M.2 NVMe SSD's with Optane flash. At some point they also sold hybrid Optane cached QLC flash drives. (QLC = slow crap)
Optane failed because the low latencies and IOPS numbers offered by traditional NAND is already enough for most businesses; NVDIMM's are expensive, small in size, require software support and other hw considerations, they eat up the precious memory slots, and only benefited some HPC applications.
Had Intel&Micron licensed the Optane tech to other companies, it could have changed the game.
Ahh.. Optane, saviour of the universe....
Intel over hyped, delayed delivery, then under delivered and over priced.
They got away with it on their CPUs for years as no competition, but in the storage space there was always more agile faster developing competitors with cheaper solutions.
Intel has done the same with GPUs, though their pricing is better, just delivered 12 months too late.
They should licence the tech and see what other can do with it as it is basically a good product, just needs a better company to develop it.
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