Intel Drops Optane Persistent Memory Support From Emerald Rapids

Intel
(Image credit: Lenovo)

Intel's next-generation Xeon Scalable processors (codenamed: Emerald Rapids) and their successors will cease support of the company's Optane Persistent Memory (PMem) modules, according to the company's own PerfMon tool, as discovered by InstLatX64. Apparently, Intel is now betting on CXL 2.0 memory expansion modules.

Intel's Emerald Rapids heavily relies on technologies developed for Sapphire Rapids, as it uses the same high-performance microarchitecture and shares the platform. That said, removing Optane Persistent Memory support looks to be a business, rather than a technological, decision. Keeping in mind that Intel will stop officially supplying Optane Persistent Memory modules on Dec. 29, 2023, it is logical not to support it on products that ramp in 2024.

 

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Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • Kamen Rider Blade
    =::::::::::::::::::(

    I love Optane tech.

    It died too young.
    Reply
  • Li Ken-un
    Look on the bright side: enterprises will be dumping lots of cheap Optane memory modules for low prices on eBay. Should you be running a pre-Emerald Rapids system, it’s a cheap upgrade to obscene amounts of “RAM.”
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Li Ken-un said:
    Look on the bright side: enterprises will be dumping lots of cheap Optane memory modules for low prices on eBay. Should you be running a pre-Emerald Rapids system, it’s a cheap upgrade to obscene amounts of “RAM.”
    I already bought my share of Optane SSD's, enough to last me a life time.
    Reply
  • Li Ken-un
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    I already bought my share of Optane SSD's, enough to last me a life time.
    Oh no, not that slow stuff. I meant the DIMM form factor Optanes.

    But that’s quite an understatement; they might outlive you. 😂
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Love my 900p :) I have two 2933 128gb optane here... but now I have a slow desktop cpu... I want some new xeon machine in the future.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    I hope we see a 'DIMM-drive' equivalent for Optane DIMMs - like were available for RAM sticks - at some point. Optane itself still has better mixed random read/write performance than even recent NVMe SSDs, and a pile of cheap surplus Optane DIMMs in a carrier would make for a very potent drive for all workloads other than serial large-file copying.
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Li Ken-un said:
    Oh no, not that slow stuff. I meant the DIMM form factor Optanes.

    But that’s quite an understatement; they might outlive you.
    That's the idea, I want "Ultra-Low Latency" that Optane SSD's offer, sadly regular NAND Flash can't provide due to it's inherent design.
    Reply