Intel Kills Off All Optane-Only SSDs for Consumers, No Replacements Planned (Updated)

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All Optane SSDs for desktop PCs discontinued

Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Editor-in-Chief

Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thestryker
    I was hoping that with the double density we'd see some drives hit the consumer space with a more reasonable price point. If this is the way they end up going for the future it's very disappointing as they weren't crippled by the nature of the tech like nand is (mixed/random io).
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    thestryker said:
    I was hoping that with the double density we'd see some drives hit the consumer space with a more reasonable price point. If this is the way they end up going for the future it's very disappointing as they weren't crippled by the nature of the tech like nand is (mixed/random io).
    Completely agree. Was hoping the new generation would bring more reasonable pricing. This is really disappointing.
    Reply
  • CerianK
    As with any potentially disruptive technology, you have to look to see who stands to be affected in both the short and long-term (both positively and negatively). At that point you can speculate what the future might hold.

    For example, one could speculate that if a major producer of a status quo technology (e.g. Samsung flash) would be negatively affected by a new superior competitive technology (e.g. Intel Optane), they might be willing to assist their competitor in other areas (e.g. CPU production) that they don't necessarily directly compete in (e.g. phones vs PCs), in exchange for a relaxation of the introduction of said disruptive technology in the directly competitive space. (e.g. This might also have an effect of how fast Intel decides to proceed on transfer of their flash business to SK Hynix, a flash competitor of Samsung).

    Such alliances, when they actually exist (i.e. not pure speculation, as in the above example), do not always benefit consumers in the short-term, but often these technologies get cross-licensed at some point so that they become more pervasive and cheaper at the consumer level where we all can benefit. Optane is some good stuff, so I hope that is sooner than later.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    Very disappointed! Intel is burning what little goodwill I had left for them, consumer-wise.

    Now I can only hope that Micron will actually stop sitting on their hands and release some 2nd gen 3DXpoint products. Sadly, they didn't get into consumer-space much with 1st gen, so my hope is barely a flicker.
    Reply
  • TechLurker
    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    Now I can only hope that Micron will actually stop sitting on their hands and release some 2nd gen 3DXpoint products. Sadly, they didn't get into consumer-space much with 1st gen, so my hope is barely a flicker.

    Last I recall, they were only interested in licensing it; but one can hope they start putting out a few drives (and RAM) themselves to fill this niche, and encourage greater adoption (esp. by AMD and ARM), as well as getting a reliable partner to make their own versions. Crucial maybe? Competing with themselves in effect? Or at least Western Digital? Maybe Kioxia (ex-Toshiba), they could use a new high-end product to get back in the game.
    Reply
  • Give it some time I’m sure this is not the last time we will see 3-D xpoint memory
    Reply
  • Jim90
    Very expensive technology, way out of the price bracket for the average consumer, though yes, QD1 speeds certainly a welcome step in the right direction. I wish more research was done on improving low QD speeds and random speeds rather than all those marketing sequential bullcrap headlines....again, the average consumer, unfortunately, won't be set up to see these e.g. source/dest imbalance.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    CerianK said:
    As with any potentially disruptive technology, you have to look to see who stands to be affected in both the short and long-term (both positively and negatively). At that point you can speculate what the future might hold.

    For example, one could speculate that if a major producer of a status quo technology (e.g. Samsung flash) would be negatively affected by a new superior competitive technology (e.g. Intel Optane), they might be willing to assist their competitor in other areas (e.g. CPU production) that they don't necessarily directly compete in (e.g. phones vs PCs), in exchange for a relaxation of the introduction of said disruptive technology in the directly competitive space. (e.g. This might also have an effect of how fast Intel decides to proceed on transfer of their flash business to SK Hynix, a flash competitor of Samsung).

    Such alliances, when they actually exist (i.e. not pure speculation, as in the above example), do not always benefit consumers in the short-term, but often these technologies get cross-licensed at some point so that they become more pervasive and cheaper at the consumer level where we all can benefit. Optane is some good stuff, so I hope that is sooner than later.
    My guess would be that intel saw DirectStorage and nvidia/AMD direct memory access and just figured that optane wouldn't be enough to compete against that for much longer which is why they keep the fab for a few years still, with intel's own XE graphics and their CPU cores getting more load and store instructions they will probably get close enough to optane speeds.
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-is-coming-to-pc/
    Reply
  • CerianK
    TerryLaze said:
    My guess would be that intel saw DirectStorage and nvidia/AMD direct memory access...
    I was specifically referring to 3D XPoint based Optane SSDs as replacement for NAND flash (which Intel is selling off) SSDs in terms of speed and endurance. They will still have the option to open the door back up for consumer Optane SSDs in the future, if they choose.

    Optane DRAM is a different story, but I don't think Intel has any plans to enter the consumer mass-market soon. That would be a shame, as we might guess that someone like Apple wouldn't mind fitting it into a cost-no-object, instant-on, zero-power hibernate design, for example. I haven't researched it to see if anyone has announced anything similar.
    Reply
  • GenericUser
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Intel sold off the part of their business that handles producing these a few months ago? If so, wasn't this a predictable side effect?
    Reply