Intel’s Optane Memory: A Promise Unfulfilled

In late July 2015, Intel and Micron Technology announced what they called the first new memory category in over 25 years. They dubbed it 3D XPoint. And the two silicon giants said that it could revolutionize fast access to large sets of data. 3D XPoint is a nonvolatile memory like NOR or NAND flash. So unlike DRAM, it doesn’t forget its data if the power goes out. There were big claims. It had read and write speeds 1,000x faster than NAND. And its endurance was 1,000x better. And it had up to ten times the density of conventional memory. A single individual die can store 128 gigabits of data. 3D XPoint would evolve into the Intel brand Optane. It promised to be the next great memory. In today’s video, we take a look at Intel and Micron’s attempt to introduce a whole new memory category.