In memoriam: Intel Optane

I’ve been working on a prototype of a potential type of RAM as part of Stanford’s Differentiated Access Memory (DAM) Project, and this project keeps bringing me back to a sadly killed Intel attempt: OptaneOr to hear about it from Intel themselves, here is one of their marketing materials. .

I tend to run in nerdy tech circles where people know what Optane is (and have strong opinions on itshocking, I know! ). That said, the internals of Optane are a bit nebulous, even to friends in these circles, and I have necessarily become fairly well versed in the design of Optane over the last couple weeks.

So, without further ado,

What was optane?

Why wasn’t it successful commercially?

TODO

How did Optane (DIMMs) work?

One paragraph tld;r.

Fin.