Intel has decided to close its Optane memory business and will now be forced to write off $559 million in inventory impairment. Intel introduced it in 2017 with the aim of burying the traditional hard drive and making it difficult for even the popular SSD drives.
Under the Optane brand, Intel combines NVDIMMs (Optane Memory) and SSDs that rely on the 3D XPoint phase change memory that was developed with ex-partner Micron. As the cost of Optane drives is higher than SSDs and performance is also inferior — losses were recorded every year — forcing Intel to close the project.
Businesses have been known to shut down due to the industry’s transition to CXL (Compute Express Link). This is a technology that is designed for data centers. It is designed to remove technical limitations, at least in the data transfer rate. The fast connection technology should also accelerate memory access.
The news came on the sidelines of Intel’s bad quarterly figure of Q2 2022. Intel only made around $15.3 billion in the second quarter of 2022, compared to $19.6 billion a year earlier. And instead of a profit in the billions, the books are currently in the red with a loss of 454 million US dollars.
