Last year Intel released a special package of i5+, i7+ and i9+ processors equipped with 16GB Optane modules that can be used with any hard drive as an ultra-fast cache memory. This week Intel has announced that these packages will be discontinued.
Intel launched the eighth generation of processor packages with Optane modules last year
The Intel Core+ products include a 16GB Optane Accelerator drive with its eighth-generation processors, whereby its ultra-fast memory is expected to serve as an XPoint cache for a secondary storage medium such as a hard drive. Unfortunately, Optane has achieved some success in the notebook market, but is not widely used in the desktop market.
Retired due to lack of demand
This week Intel announced that its i7+8700, i5+8400 and i5+8500 processors will be discontinued due to lack of demand. This means that these processors will not be available in the near future, and Intel declares that orders for these processors will be delivered “while stocks last” and that final orders will be available by September 30, 2019, provided Intel has stocks by then.
Optane SSDs offer performance levels somewhere between RAMDISK and traditional NAND memory and offer extremely high performance at low latencies. Optane’s main problem is the high cost per GB, which makes it unsuitable as a primary storage system.
It seems that Intel’s strategy did not work and Optane was not introduced as quickly as expected. Perhaps, if costs continue to fall, they can try again successfully.