It appears the tip is in sight for Intel’s beleaguered Optane reminiscence enterprise. Tucked away in a stark Q2 2022 earnings launch for the corporate (extra on that later at the moment) is a really curious assertion in a piece coping with non-GAAP changes: Within the second quarter of 2022, we started winding down our Intel Optane reminiscence enterprise. Moreover, Intel’s earnings report additionally notes that the corporate is taking a $559 million cost for “Optane stock impairment” this quarter.
Past these two gadgets, there isn’t any additional details about Optane in Intel’s earnings launch or related presentation. Now we have contacted firm representatives for extra info and are awaiting a response.
Taking these components at face worth, it could due to this fact appear that Intel is making ready to cease its Optane reminiscence enterprise and the event of the related 3D XPoint expertise. Admittedly, there’s a excessive diploma of nuance across the Optane identify and product strains right here – which is why we’re in search of clarification from Intel – as Intel gives a number of Optane merchandise together with “Optane reminiscence” “Optane persistent reminiscence” and “SSD Optane”. Nonetheless, in earlier Intel earnings releases and different monetary paperwork, Optane’s full enterprise unit has historically been known as their “Optane reminiscence enterprise”, so it could seem that Intel is certainly shrinking the enterprise unit. of Optane, not simply the Optane Reminiscence product.
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Additional to our request, Intel has despatched a brief assertion on the Optane phase-down. Whereas not providing many extra particulars on Intel’s exit, it does verify that Intel is certainly exiting the whole Optane enterprise.
We proceed to streamline our portfolio to assist our IDM 2.0 technique. This consists of evaluating divestment actions that aren’t sufficiently worthwhile or that aren’t important to our strategic aims. After cautious consideration, Intel plans to discontinue future product growth inside its Optane enterprise. We’re dedicated to supporting Optane clients by means of the transition.
Intel, in flip, used 3D XPoint as the idea for 2 product strains. For its knowledge middle clients, it provided Optane Persistent Reminiscence, which built-in 3D XPoint into DIMMs as a partial alternative for conventional DRAMs. Optane DIMMs provided larger bit density than DRAM and, mixed with their persistent and non-volatile nature, had been a gorgeous providing for programs that required large units of working reminiscence and may gain advantage from its non-volatile nature, corresponding to database servers. Throughout this time, Intel additionally used 3D XPoint as the idea for a number of storage merchandise, together with high-performance SSDs for the server and shopper market, and as a smaller high-speed cache to be used with slower NAND SSDs.
Nevertheless, 3D XPoint’s distinctive attributes have additionally been a problem for Intel for the reason that expertise’s launch. Though it was designed for scalability through layer stacking, 3D XPoint’s manufacturing prices remained greater than NAND per bit, making the expertise considerably costlier than SSDs much more. environment friendly. In the meantime, Optane DIMMs, whereas occupying a singular area of interest, had been simply as costly and provided slower switch charges than DRAM. So regardless of Intel’s efforts to give you a product that would cross each product areas, for workloads that do not profit from the expertise’s distinctive capabilities, 3D XPoint ended up being neither pretty much as good as DRAM. or NAND of their respective duties – making Optane merchandise a troublesome promote.
Consequently, Intel has been shedding cash on its Optane enterprise for many (if not all) of its life, together with tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in 2020. Optane, however unexpectedly. -excluding the events once they have printed these figures, they’ve been properly within the crimson on an working revenue foundation. Moreover, experiences from Blocks & Information have claimed that Intel is sitting on a big oversupply of 3D XPoint chips – on the order of two years of stock firstly of this 12 months. All of this underscores the problem Intel has had in promoting Optane merchandise and provides to the price of a write-down/write-off, which Intel is doing at the moment with its $559 million Optane write-down cost.
Due to this fact, a possible slowdown for Optane/3D XPoint has been within the tea leaves for a while now, and Intel has taken steps to switch or cut back the exercise. Most notably, the dissolution of the Intel/Micron IMFT three way partnership left Micron in possession of the only real manufacturing plant for 3D XPoint, whereas Micron deserted its personal 3D XPoint plans. And after producing 3D XPoint reminiscence till 2021, Micron lastly bought the fab to Texas Devices for different makes use of. Since then, Intel hasn’t had entry to a high-volume manufacturing facility for 3D XPoint – though if the stock experiences are true, they have not wanted to supply extra reminiscence for a while.
In the meantime, on the product aspect, the shutdown of the Optane enterprise follows Intel’s earlier exit from the shopper storage market. Though the corporate launched two generations of Optane merchandise for the information middle market, it by no means launched a second technology of shopper merchandise (e.g. Optane 905P). And, after promoting its NAND enterprise to SK Hynix (which now operates as Solidigm), Intel not produces different sorts of shopper storage. Retiring the remaining knowledge middle merchandise is due to this fact the logical, if unlucky, subsequent step.
Intel’s Previous Optane Persistent Reminiscence Roadmap: What Will By no means Be
Total, Intel selected to finish the Optane/3D XPoint enterprise at a vital time for the enterprise. With the launch of their Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors this 12 months, Intel was beforehand anticipated to launch a 3rd technology of Optane merchandise, most notably their “Crow Go” 3rd Technology Persistent DIMMs, which amongst different issues would replace Optane DIMM expertise to make use of a DDR5 interface. Whereas growth of Crow Go is probably going full or practically full at this level (given Intel’s growth schedule and Sapphire Rapids delays), launching and supporting the product would nonetheless incur up-front and long-term prices. vital long-term, forcing Intel to assist the expertise. for one more technology.
As a substitute of Optane persistent reminiscence, Intel’s official technique is to show to CXL reminiscence expertise (CXL.mem), which permits unstable and non-volatile reminiscence to be hooked up to a processor through a appropriate PCIe bus. CXL. This is able to accomplish lots of the similar targets as Optane (non-volatile reminiscence, massive capacities) with out the event prices of a completely separate reminiscence expertise. Sapphire Rapids, in flip, shall be Intel’s first processor to assist CXL, and the general expertise has a lot wider trade assist.
AsteraLabs: CXL Reminiscence Topology
Nonetheless, Intel’s withdrawal of Optane/3D XPoint marks the unlucky finish of an attention-grabbing product line. 3D XPoint DIMMs had been a novel concept even when they did not fairly work, and 3D XPoint was designed for ridiculously quick SSDs due to its large random I/O benefit – and that is a function in contrast to another SSD vendor. going to have the ability to absolutely replicate anytime quickly. So for the strong state storage market, it marks the tip of an period.
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