Optane Pmem killed - it's been an interesting journey

[SeanW]

Hi Intel team,

With the announcement that Intel is killing Optane entirely, it would be good to understand -

• Future of PMDK and the associated subprojects
• Any more details on what is meant by "We are committed to supporting Optane customers through the transition." (Link)

I'm not sure what a transition means for those who have built on Optane, AppDirect & PMDK. CXL it seems will not come close to the cost/performance characteristics that Optane/AppDirect/PMDK combination provided. 

All the best to everyone affected by this decision.

Many thanks,

Sean

[Andy Rudoff]

Hi Sean,

As Intel announced, we are winding down the Optane product line after the third generation ("Crow Pass") ships.  In the meantime, the team continues to deliver on existing commitments and you'll see some PMDK library updates coming in the next few weeks.  The exact details of of Intel's involvement with PMem after Crow Pass are still being worked out.

Thanks,

-andy

[Anton Gavriliuk]

It is sad, sad, sad, pretty sad, and once more sad....

In the future, could an NVMe SSD connected via CXL and using load/store semantics replace Optane ??

Anton

пн, 1 авг. 2022 г. в 14:38, Andy Rudoff <an...@rudoff.com>:

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[Andy Rudoff]

Anything that reports it is PMem as a CXL Type 3 memory device will work with the existing ecosystem.  To implement the PMem, the device could use one of the emerging types of persistent media, DRAM backed by stored energy, or yes, some sort of SSD with a caching layer in front of it to provide latencies more like memory.  I'm sure we'll continue to see interesting CXL products emerge.

[Anton Gavriliuk]

Hi all

> Anything that reports it is PMem as a CXL Type 3 memory device will work with the existing ecosystem.

Sounds good.  However there is the question - how much memory (local DRAM + CXL attached DRAM) in upcoming
Sapphire Rapids will be supported ?

Anton

пн, 1 авг. 2022 г. в 15:31, Andy Rudoff <an...@rudoff.com>:

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[George Carlisle]

Intel has hard decisions to make…

I’ll probably stop doing business with them after this. 

They have squandered too much and they are out of time…

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[Anton Gavriliuk]

I would add that many software world leaders already modified their software products for Optane PMEM (both appdirect & memory modes), such as -
Oracle, Microsoft, VMware, Nutanix, SAP, Aerospike, .......

While CXL will be new and untested in the real world, Optane already had 3+ years of real life.

Everything was just beginning...

P.S., Not sure who will be focused on Crow Pass knowing that the end is close...

Anton

вт, 2 авг. 2022 г. в 15:05, George Carlisle <george....@gmail.com>:

Intel has hard decisions to make…

I’ll probably stop doing business with them after this. 

They have squandered too much and they are out of time…

On Sunday, July 31, 2022, SeanW <sdw.g...@axomem.io> wrote:

Hi Intel team,

With the announcement that Intel is killing Optane entirely, it would be good to understand -

• Future of PMDK and the associated subprojects
• Any more details on what is meant by "We are committed to supporting Optane customers through the transition." (Link)

I'm not sure what a transition means for those who have built on Optane, AppDirect & PMDK. CXL it seems will not come close to the cost/performance characteristics that Optane/AppDirect/PMDK combination provided. 

All the best to everyone affected by this decision.

Many thanks,

Sean

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[George Carlisle]

Intel is just awful!! They haven't even delivered the Ponte Vechhio / Sapphire Rapids modules to create more demand. Two years of training to configure these modules correct is down the drain? 

Will someone buy this or it this dead dead?

[Wei Wang]

"We also will continue development of Crow Pass on Sapphire Rapids as we engage with key customers to determine their plans to deploy this product." 

Interesting that David Tuhy said this. [Source: https://twitter.com/dylan522p/status/1555317937648455681]

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[SeanW]

Everyone we worked with on the Intel Optane team was really supportive. Together we were doing something new and different. Many there have lost sleep & family time working to bring Optane to market. This seems to be a higher-level decision to appease investors due to factors inside and outside Intel at large.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/optane_intel_cancellation/

Now we're back to the same memory architecture we've had since the 1960's when IBM couldn't run the bill of materials payments for the Apollo Saturn V rocket in the 8MB of mainframe memory they had at the time. 

Pat> "making the difficult decision to wind down our efforts in Optane as we embrace CXL"

This like saying "making the difficult decision to wind down our efforts in electric vehicles as we embrace freeways."

[Adrian Jackson]

Indeed, conflating CXL and Optane is very strange. There are some promising signs/noises on NVMe devices on CXL with good random read performance, but that's still a long way from delivered Optane technology with benchmarked random read and write performance.

[Wei Wang]

Given what Gelsinger said back in Feb [*]: "I never want to be in memory, you see I’m doing everything I can to exit our memory businesses in that regard.", it's reasonable to expect that all major Optane customers have been consulted before the decision was made public.

[*] https://stratechery.com/2022/an-interview-with-intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger/

On Fri, Aug 5, 2022 at 1:38 PM steve <st...@steveheller.org> wrote:

On Fri, 5 Aug 2022 12:18:42 +0100, Wei Wang <weiwa...@gmail.com> wrote:

>"We also will continue development of Crow Pass on Sapphire Rapids as we
>engage with key customers to determine their plans to deploy this product."

I'm sure there are a lot of customers who are going to spend precious development resources on
deploying a product that has already been discontinued!

>Interesting that David Tuhy said this. [Source:
>https://twitter.com/dylan522p/status/1555317937648455681]
>
>
>
>On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 7:58 PM George Carlisle <george....@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Intel is just awful!! They haven't even delivered the Ponte Vechhio /
>> Sapphire Rapids modules to create more demand. Two years of training to
>> configure these modules correct is down the drain?
>> Will someone buy this or it this dead dead?
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 1:00 PM Anton Gavriliuk <antos...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I would add that many software world leaders already modified their
>>> software products for Optane PMEM (both appdirect & memory modes), such as -
>>> Oracle, Microsoft, VMware, Nutanix, SAP, Aerospike, .......
>>>
>>> While CXL will be new and untested in the real world, Optane already had
>>> 3+ years of real life.
>>>
>>> Everything was just beginning...
>>>
>>> P.S., Not sure who will be focused on Crow Pass knowing that the end is
>>> close...
>>>
>>> Anton
>>>

>>> ??, 2 ???. 2022 ?. ? 15:05, George Carlisle <george....@gmail.com>:

>>>
>>>> Intel has hard decisions to make…
>>>> I’ll probably stop doing business with them after this.
>>>> They have squandered too much and they are out of time…
>>>>
>>>> On Sunday, July 31, 2022, SeanW <sdw.g...@axomem.io> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Intel team,
>>>>>
>>>>> With the announcement that Intel is killing Optane entirely, it would
>>>>> be good to understand -
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - Future of PMDK and the associated subprojects

>>>>>    - Any more details on what is meant by "We are committed to

>>>>>    supporting Optane customers through the transition." (Link

>>>>>    <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-kills-optane-memory-business-for-good>

>>>>>    )
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure what a transition means for those who have built on
>>>>> Optane, AppDirect & PMDK. CXL it seems will not come close to the
>>>>> cost/performance characteristics that Optane/AppDirect/PMDK combination
>>>>> provided.
>>>>>
>>>>> All the best to everyone affected by this decision.
>>>>>
>>>>> Many thanks,
>>>>> Sean
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> Groups "pmem" group.
>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>>> an email to pmem+uns...@googlegroups.com.
>>>>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmem/1a5a2a8d-364e-4ee3-afaf-3c296455956dn%40googlegroups.com

>>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmem/1a5a2a8d-364e-4ee3-afaf-3c296455956dn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>>>>> .

>>>>>
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>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmem/CANRD23FRXw3B5XVBM_UR2TRf%3DRuiRbsSBJbuheKNZjNNqVAY3g%40mail.gmail.com
>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmem/CANRD23FRXw3B5XVBM_UR2TRf%3DRuiRbsSBJbuheKNZjNNqVAY3g%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>>>> .

>>>>
>>> --
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>> .
>>
------------
Steve Heller

[Jan K]

Just out of curiosity, to better understand the downfall of optane pmem:

Did at least one affordable (for an average developer) workstation
with pmem support appear on the market?
I'm pretty sure that Intel announced in 2019 that there'll be some
workstations with DCPMM support soon. I may have missed this, but I'm
afraid that pmem was somehow (intentionally?) made solely a luxury
item.

Was there at least one platform that officially supports eADR?
Optane pmem, in the app direct mode, has (had?) a lot of overhead due
to complicated ADR persistency guarantees and as far as I know at
least in some CPU generations implemented clwb as a flush, not
writeback. So did we ever see (or had a chance to see) the performance
of pmem (used for app direct) without superfluous overheads?

Sometimes I really don't get the business strategy of Intel, it looks
they make evident mistakes on purpose…

Regards,
Jan

2022-08-01 13:38 GMT+02:00, Andy Rudoff <an...@rudoff.com>:
> Hi Sean,
>
> As Intel announced, we are winding down the Optane product line after the
> third generation ("Crow Pass") ships. In the meantime, the team continues
> to deliver on existing commitments and you'll see some PMDK library updates
>
> coming in the next few weeks. The exact details of of Intel's involvement
> with PMem after Crow Pass are still being worked out.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -andy
>
> On Sunday, July 31, 2022 at 9:21:33 PM UTC-6 SeanW wrote:
>
>> Hi Intel team,
>>
>> With the announcement that Intel is killing Optane entirely, it would be
>> good to understand -
>>
>>
>> - Future of PMDK and the associated subprojects

>> - Any more details on what is meant by "We are committed to supporting

>>
>> Optane customers through the transition." (Link
>>

>> <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-kills-optane-memory-business-for-good>
>> )

>>
>>
>> I'm not sure what a transition means for those who have built on Optane,
>> AppDirect & PMDK. CXL it seems will not come close to the cost/performance
>>
>> characteristics that Optane/AppDirect/PMDK combination provided.
>>
>> All the best to everyone affected by this decision.
>>
>> Many thanks,
>> Sean
>>
>>
>>
>

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