Optane's Last Gasp: Intel's Final Persistent Memory Roadmap Leaks

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Intel's final Optane Persistent Memory 300-Series modules detailed.

Intel
(Image credit: Lenovo)

Renowned hardware leaker HXL has published what is claimed to be Intel's Optane Persistent Memory Roadmap. The slide details the company's upcoming Persistent Memory 300-series modules, codenamed Crow Pass, for Intel's next-generation Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids processors. 

Intel's Optane PMem 300-series Crow Pass modules will offer substantial performance improvements over predecessors, as they will use a DDR-T2 interface featuring a 4000 MT/s to 4400 MT/s data transfer rate. This will result in up to 3 GB/s 2R1W random bandwidth, as well as up to 6 GB/s 2R1W sequential bandwidth per module.

Furthermore, Intel promises an up to 25% opportunistic bandwidth increase per CPS. Although the new modules will be significantly faster than their predecessors, they will still consume about 15W. 

(Image credit: @9550pro/Twitter)

Intel will continue to offer Optane Persistent Memory modules in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. And since Intel's upcoming Eagle Stream platform features an eight-channel memory subsystem, up to 4TB of 3DXPoint memory will be supported.

Another improvement of Intel's Crow Pass modules is compliance with FIPS140-3 level 2 requirements. On the hardware side of things, the modules will still use AES-256 encryption though, just like previous models. 

While Intel has officially abandoned its Optane memory business and there will be no new SSDs based on 3DXPoint memory, the company is still on track to release another family of Optane Persistent Memory 300-series modules for its Eagle Stream platform, based on its 4th and 5th Generations Xeon Scalable processors, codenamed Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids. These Optane PMem modules will serve Intel's Xeon Scalable platforms in the next few years, when there's a need for a lot of relatively inexpensive memory near the CPU.

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Anton Shilov
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.

73 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cyrusfox
    Could we get someone to play taps for Optane, last product for it here? Seems like it. Agreed with this article , Optane we hardly knew yeah
    I did grab 905p 960GB for cheap, and tempted by the cheap P1600x 118gb, I should grab at least one of those. How long will it be until we see another emerging memory outside NAND and DRAM hit the market?

    So Long Optane, will be a long time if ever we see anything like you again.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    cyrusfox said:
    Could we get someone to play taps for Optane, last product for it here? Seems like it. Agreed with this article , Optane we hardly knew yeah
    I did grab 905p 960GB for cheap, and tempted by the cheap P1600x 118gb, I should grab at least one of those. How long will it be until we see another emerging memory outside NAND and DRAM hit the market?

    So Long Optane, will be a long time if ever we see anything like you again.
    I picked up 4 of those P1600X drives for when I build a new server box since I'm not going to be using a raid controller I want to utilize them with ZFS. I kicked around one of the 905p drives, but I don't know which platform I'm using yet so I don't know if I'll have the extra PCIe lanes needed.

    The only SCM other type technology I've seen benchmarked is Kioxia's XL-Flash, but I've never seen any products make it to market. I think this has to do with the financial/legal issues the company has had, but it's hard to say. This isn't a new technology, but a modification of NAND so one would think that this shouldn't need dramatic modification of fabs to make. It also seemed to perform pretty close to Optane so at least on the storage side it could make for a viable stand in.
    Reply
  • DavidLejdar
    Next for Intel is apparently CXL - which should in particular enable memory to be attached to the CPU over a PCIe 5.0 link. And that shows that there is a push for increased data transfer rates, speed and latency, as CPUs could apparently perform way higher than what even DDR5 and Gen5 NVMes can deliver there these days.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    CXL replaces Optane Memory, but does absolutely nothing for the storage side of things. There is no non-volatile memory technology on the market that has good random performance now that Optane is a dead end (there's also the absolutely absurd endurance which no tech can come close to). I'm unsure if Intel just bet on the wrong usage for the technology, or if the storage side was just never in the picture for volume sales. I know Gelsinger never had any interest in Intel doing anything with memory tech (or as he put it making dumb chips) which is why he was quick to bail on the NAND business.

    Just taking a wild guess here that the cost of spinning up a fab and developing the next iteration of 3D XPoint would have been way too big of an investment for the storage market (the memory side being a dead end due to CXL) that they would have to try to grow on top of all of the engineering costs. It's still a great shame because it leaves a gap in the market which is unlikely to be filled. I firmly believe consumers are the real losers here as enterprise can just throw money at circumventing the issue while consumers will be stuck with just increasing sequential R/W on NAND which is mostly irrelevant.
    Reply
  • DavidM012
    Question: Is there no technology that would combine memory and storage into one device? So if you could have a hard disk at the speed of ram and memory with the capacity of a hard disk wouldn't that speed up the entire system? It would be like loading your games on a ram disk and since Optane can be non volatile couldn't they just redesign the architecture a bit to have a fast hybrid memory/storage interface to the cpu and be done with it?

    I'd guess reasons why they wouldn't do anything like that, to compete in the storage and memory market at the same time well I suppose you lose a bit of fault tolerance: If your memory and storage goes out at the same time you're done whilst at the moment your storage can go down but doesn't take your memory with it so then they would probably have to vastly overbuild the fault tolerance and reliability - but Optane had high endurance?

    Maybe could solve the fault tolerance by having 2 hybrid modules or something.

    Question is would it have high endurance as system memory?

    There could still be a market for ssd's for more storage even if there were a hybrid memory/storage drive to run the OS and apps from.

    Well the CPU needs a pool to dump data in and they don't make cache memory larger since it's expensive and runs hot?

    It sounds like the main problems of hybridising memory and storage would be getting customers to trust it, and simply developing something at a price that can duel with dimms and nvme so what if you could produce a universally compatible interface and have hybrid memory/storage devices with capacities starting at 500gb up to 4 tb well it would sort things for customers who need large amounts of memory and sort things for consumers who only want a steam library.

    It might only be sci fi though since I don't know the technical reasons why the pc arcitecture couldn't be redesigned and a new technology introduced on a new line of motherboards - maybe it's just too much of a risk, to get people on board with the idea, and put the pieces together is too complex and it all depends on whether people would buy it and if it was durable enough.

    At the moment anyway we're loading data onto our drives via the network and usb since cd's, dvds and blu-ray have all receded the way of the floppy disk.

    So it's just having storage and memory that can move data around the pc as fast as the cpu innit? I see no reason (besides any unknown technical hurdles) that a company couldn't simply design a pc with a new architecture, plonk it on a shelf and see if people buy it. The main selling point would be maintaining compatablity with x86/64 software. If you could keep a lid on r&d costs and market at a competitive price,

    It might grow or it might flop or it might cause chaos, who knows? The main silly mistake you could make would be to produce something that underperforms against it's competitors.

    You could keep some of the modularity of the PC to make space for upgrades and well maybe just cut out this whole budget/hi end approach, make everything middle so manufacturing costs would be lower and everyone pays a reasonable price for the same thing.

    The question is would be technically possible to repurpose some of this tech? Well I suppose things developed the way they did simply because CPUs roll off the production line in different grades.

    That's no reason you couldn't hybridise storage and memory and design yet another new mobo interface?
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Intel needs to sell the IP to the Memory Manufacturers and get everybody in the industry involved to use it.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    4 channel 4400 Optane is going to be a faster drive than Nand will ever be capable of in a pc form factor. I've seen the DDR4 dimms for sale, but I'll never have the hardware that has the permissions to use it. If they enabled using these DDR5 standard modules for HEDT I'm sure they would get more publicity.

    But for the average consumer it isn't worth it. It works great with my 13900kf, but for my old 4980hq a sata nand ssd is good enough. I just picked up a 1TB Team sata ssd for that system for $47 to use a Christmas gift card. Basic nand is so cheap right now and isn't that bad to use.
    But the same reasons for not getting Optane also apply to not getting anything but decent bargain gen3 NVME. I also have a Hynix P41 and it isn't as fast in doing anything but the right sized transfer as my Optane. Too small is slower, too big is slower, too full is slower, OS drive or gaming is slower, mixed is slower. The form factor is nice as long as it isn't used too much and throttles. That's why gen3 is nice, it is lower power, Gen 4,5 are just second best for a lot more money than basic.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    DavidM012 said:
    Question: Is there no technology that would combine memory and storage into one device? So if you could have a hard disk at the speed of ram and memory with the capacity of a hard disk wouldn't that speed up the entire system?
    We had those. Hybrid drives.
    A small solid state segment and a large spinning drive.

    Typically 8-16-32GB of SSD, and someTB of spinning.

    When solid state was expensive, they were sort of a transitional thing. Sort of good for repetitive data, where the most used blocks of data ended up in the SSD portion.
    But with falling SATA III prices, those went away fairly quickly.
    Reply
  • DavidM012
    I mean hybrid memory and ssd. Do away with dimms and nvme, or at least relegate nvme to secondary storage like hdd's have been, and have one optane based module that can run the OS and data storage at the speed of memory and memory with the capacity of storage. All solid state. One drive serving as memory and storage - possible since Optane is non volatile?

    And if your system ram is non-volatile shouldn't it be that you don't lose data in a power cut and it kind of changes how the system behaves a bit and loads programs since memory wouldn't be cleared unless you instructed it to. So if you had an app crash or something, maybe a reset wouldn't clear it if the ram wasn't volatile if you see what I mean. You'd need to reprogram the OS a bit maybe to run a virtual machine per program or something.

    So might be sci fi, and I don't really know what the technical hurdles might be just wondering if it isn't 'possible' to run memory and storage off one module with a new interface to the cpu to run storage that's as fast as memory since nvme speeds are catching up to system ram speeds anyway.

    All that really matters is the speed of the various buses or how fast they need to be to load data and shuffle it around the system.

    10gbps ethernet could be just as fast a way to load data as a 10gbs nvme? So what does it matter where the data is sourced from? Thin clients could possibly run off ethernet instead of having drives so long as there was infrastructure to support them so it's just a matter of the advantages and disadvantages of each data transport bus isn't it?
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    DavidM012 said:
    I mean hybrid memory and ssd. Do away with dimms and nvme, or at least relegate nvme to secondary storage like hdd's have been, and have one optane based module that can run the OS and data storage at the speed of memory and memory with the capacity of storage. All solid state. One drive serving as memory and storage - possible since Optane is non volatile?
    Thats what Optane was supposed to be.

    Very very fast (near actual RAM speed), non-volatile.

    Cost, need, the rest of the needed ecosystem....
    Reply