Again in February we speculated that Intel could fall its Optane memory enterprise. In its newest earning launch, Intel stated that “in Q2 2022, we initiated the winding down of our Intel Optane memory organization.” The earnings report also noted that Intel will choose a $559M “Optane memory impairment” charge this quarter. Down below is an picture of an Optane SSD.

In January 2021, intel explained that it would stop shipping and delivery most of the Optane-primarily based products and solutions for shopper programs (e.g. gaming). In March of 2021 Micron, Intel’s previous 3D XPoint (the joint task title for Intel’s Optane memory) partner stated that it was ceasing progress of 3D XPoint and later on in the 12 months offered the Lehi Utah plant where by it made 3D XPoint for Intel and its individual use, to TI.

Intel bought off much of its memory small business when it declared back in December 2021 that it was marketing its SSD and NAND company to SK hynix, like Intel’s NAND fab in Delian, China. This business device is now named Solidigm (a subsidiary of SK hynix). Getting out of the Optane business enterprise fairly considerably completes the company’s exit from advertising memory items.

The earning concept from Intel leaves open up the possibility that Intel could offer its Optane enterprise to some other firm, like it did with its NAND and SSD small business. Optane has been integrated into storage and memory units by quite a few firms. These companies ought to be looking at what their subsequent steps could be.

On the other hand, we believe that Intel has been subsidizing its Optane products in buy to preserve the cost very low plenty of to produce need (approximately 50 percent the cost of DRAM, in $/GB). The notion would be to subsidize the item until finally the producing volume reduced the prices to fewer than the price tag they essential to provide for in get to nutritional supplement DRAM memory. Also, Intel had indicated for a couple of years that they saw Optane combined with the company’s server chips as a differentiator from other server CPU businesses.

Intel says its is winding down its Optane memory organization. It remains to be noticed whether or not Optane will be resurrected somewhere else, or just be…