Intel is about to launch third-generation Optane products
It was previously reported that Intel’s R&D center in New Mexico is developing fourth-generation Optane products. 3D XPoint was once considered an innovative memory technology, but it has not really realized its potential in the market, and Intel’s Optane business is said to have suffered considerable losses in the past few years.
According to Blocks & Files, Intel VP Kristie Mann said the third-generation Optane products are coming and are working on the next generation based on the CXL specification. Intel’s team showed off new Optane use cases but didn’t provide an exact timing, and more news is likely in the coming weeks.
While Intel will launch third-generation Optane products with 3D XPoint flash chips, Intel has focused on future products based on the CXL specification. Compute Express Link (CXL) is an open interconnection protocol that enables high-speed and efficient interconnection between CPU and GPU, FPGA, or other accelerators. CXL meets the requirements of today’s high-performance heterogeneous computing and provides higher bandwidth and better memory consistency.
The current new CXL 2.0 specification builds on the physical and electrical interface of the PCIe Gen5 standard, added support for memory pools to maximize memory utilization, and provides standardized management of persistent memory, concurrent operation with DDR is allowed, freeing up DDR for other uses, while being backward compatible with the CXL 1.1 and CXL version 1.0 specifications. Samsung introduced the industry’s first CXL memory modules last year in a new EDSFF form factor that greatly expands the memory capacity and bandwidth of server systems. It is foreseeable that Intel should launch similar products in the future.
