US What Intel Optane was
Intel Optane was Intel’s brand for memory and storage products built on 3D XPoint, a non-volatile memory technology it developed with Micron. 3D XPoint sat between DRAM and NAND flash: slower and denser than DRAM, but much faster and far more durable than flash, and it kept its data without power.
Intel and Micron announced 3D XPoint in 2015, and the first Optane products shipped in 2017. Over the next five years Intel sold it in three forms: small Optane Memory modules that cached a hard drive, Optane SSDs for workstations and data centres, and Optane Persistent Memory modules that fitted in server memory slots.
Optane is now discontinued. Micron left 3D XPoint in 2021, and in July 2022 Intel announced it was winding down its Optane business. Existing products remain under their warranty and support terms, but no new generations are coming, and remaining stock is limited.
How 3D XPoint differed from flash
NAND flash stores data as charge trapped in a cell, writes in pages and has to erase whole blocks before it can rewrite them. That makes small random writes slow and wears the cells out. 3D XPoint stored bits by changing the resistance of a material in a grid of stacked cells, and each cell could be rewritten directly, with no erase step.
The result was low and consistent latency, typically around 10 µs on an Optane SSD against several times that on a NAND SSD, and very high endurance. Data centre Optane SSDs were rated for tens of full drive writes per day. Optane did not beat the best NAND SSDs on sequential speed or price per gigabyte, which is where it struggled commercially.
Optane Persistent Memory ran in two modes. In Memory Mode it acted as a large pool of ordinary, volatile system memory, with the DRAM in front of it as a cache. In App Direct mode, software written for it could store data directly in the modules and find it there after a restart.
The Optane product families
The Optane name covered several different products, which is why Optane Memory, an Optane SSD and Optane Persistent Memory are easy to confuse.
| Product | Form factor | First shipped | What it did | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optane Memory (M10, H10, H20) | M.2 module, around 16 to 64 GB of Optane | 2017 | Cached a hard drive through Intel Rapid Storage Technology; H10 and H20 paired Optane with QLC flash on one card | Discontinued |
| Optane SSD (900P, 905P) | PCIe add-in card, U.2, M.2 | 2017 | Low-latency NVMe SSD for workstations | Discontinued |
| Optane SSD DC (P4800X, P5800X) | U.2, add-in card, E1.S | 2017 | High-endurance data centre SSD for caching, logging and databases | Discontinued |
| Optane Persistent Memory | DDR4 DIMM slot | 2019 | Large, non-volatile memory alongside DRAM in Intel Xeon Scalable servers | Discontinued |
Optane Memory needed a supported Intel chipset and processor generation, and Optane Persistent Memory needed specific Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Neither worked on AMD systems.
Why Intel discontinued Optane
Optane was expensive to make and never reached the volumes that bring costs down. Meanwhile NAND SSDs improved quickly. Fast NVMe drives with SLC caching made Optane Memory caching of hard drives pointless, because an SSD as the boot drive did the job better and more simply. In servers, the industry moved towards CXL, an open standard for attaching extra memory over PCIe, rather than a single vendor’s memory modules. With Micron gone from 3D XPoint, Intel took a write-down on its Optane inventory and ended the line in 2022.
What to do with systems that use Optane
Industrial computers and servers run for years, so Optane still turns up in installed systems, from industrial PCs to rack mount servers. The right next step depends on which Optane product is fitted.
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Optane Memory caching a hard drive. Replace the hard drive and cache with a single NVMe or SATA SSD. Our FAQ on NVMe vs SATA on M.2 helps choose between them.
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Optane SSD used for logging or databases. An industrial NVMe SSD rated for high endurance, or one running a pseudo-SLC mode, covers most write-heavy workloads at a lower cost.
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Power-safe writes. Optane’s direct writes made it resilient to power cuts. On a NAND drive, choose a model with power loss protection.
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Optane Persistent Memory in servers. Plan the move to a larger DRAM configuration or CXL memory when the server is replaced, and test the application, because software written for persistent memory may need changes.
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Spares for a fleet. Stock of Optane parts is limited, so plan last-time-buy quantities or the replacement before the next failure.
Quick answers on Intel Optane
Intel Optane: common questions
Is Intel Optane discontinued?
Yes. Intel announced in July 2022 that it was winding down the Optane business. Existing products keep their warranty, but there are no new generations.
Is Optane Memory the same as RAM?
No. The M.2 Optane Memory modules were a storage cache. Only Optane Persistent Memory sat in memory slots, and even that worked alongside DRAM rather than replacing it.
Do I need Optane with an SSD?
No. Optane Memory was designed to speed up hard drives. A system that boots from an SSD gains little or nothing from it.
Is Optane better than an SSD?
For latency and endurance, yes; for most uses, no longer. Optane SSDs answered small random reads faster and lasted longer, but current NVMe SSDs are faster in sequential transfers and far cheaper per gigabyte.
What replaced Intel Optane?
Fast NVMe SSDs and more DRAM. In data centres, CXL memory expansion is taking over the persistent memory role.
We fit industrial NVMe and SATA SSDs as standard in the systems we build, and can specify a replacement for an Optane-based design, as set out in our guide to M.2 slots and industrial SSDs.