Intel's latest marketing strategy for Optane memory is 3D XPoint memory-based DIMMs, which promises to offer far superior performance with far superior capabilities.

We have seen some Intel Optane units with 3D XPoint memories for the professional sector and for the home sector at the moment, we have only seen units that do the cache function, so at the moment they are quite irrelevant in the general market. In another marketing move by Intel to promote Optane and its new memory, it has announced that they have developed DIMMs, the same modules as current RAM. These modules would be technically quite similar to the RAM modules that we all use in our computers.

The big difference between an Optane DIMM and another DRAM DIMM is that Intel's solution offers very low latency, like RAM and the advantage of a flash memory, which allows data to not be erased and also increases capacity. of each module. They would be installed in systems instead of traditional RAM, but of course, this will require processors that support it (there are not on the market, yet) and motherboards that support these memories (there are not on the market, yet).

These new Optane units in DIMM format will arrive during the second half of 2018, coincidence or not, when the Cannon Lake, the first Intel processors manufactured in 10nm, is expected to hit the market. The new DIMMs will work as a first storage device that will have memory mapped, making it more powerful than current DDR4 memory. Forget for the moment to see it in the domestic segment, since in principle it will go to the professional sector and supercomputer systems. It will initially be supported by Microsoft, Linux, Oracle, SAP, and VMWare.