Last week, at the Intel Data Center Tech Summit conference, the company officially presented the Optane memory based on
3D XPoint modules in DIMM format, called Optane DC Persistent Memory (please do not confuse with
Intel Optane Memory , the consumer line of caching drives).
The memory bars have a capacity of 128, 256 or 512 GB, the pinout complies with the DIMM standard, however, naturally, the hardware must support this type of memory - such support will appear in the next generation of server platforms Intel Xeon. As for the software support of the product, the Intel
Persistent Memory Development Kit (PMDK, Open Source Project, NVML) has existed for quite a long time already.
Unfortunately, there are no technical details in the presentation, such as power consumption, frequency, etc. - we will wait for an update in the
ARK . It is also unclear whether it will be possible to combine DRAM and Optane on the same channel of the memory controller. However, the memory that has just appeared will soon be possible to “touch” and measure something, but only remotely. In the summer, Internet testing of Optane DC Persistent Memory will be conducted - you
can also
become its participant if you work at an Intel partner company (it's not too late, by the way, to become). A server farm with 2-processor nodes, 256 GB DRAM and 1 TB of Persistent Memory is provided for testing.
Further, at the end of the year, deliveries of memory to individual projects will begin Well, wide sales are scheduled for the beginning of 2019.