Intel halts the production of its Core+ Series (Processor+Optane Cache bundles)

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 01/18/2019 09:49 AM | source: tomshardware | 9 comment(s)

Remember back in April that we mentioned Intel to offer Core+ bundles? That is a Core i5/i7/i9 Processors Bundled with Optane Cache SSD. Intel started to push its partners to bundle the processors and motherboards with Optane.

You might have noticed a lack of these SKUs in the stores, as Intel halts these models. Tom's Hardware has found out that no new orders will be accepted after 30 September 2019 That little + means, well, it simply means that the product is Optane ready and bundled. There were merely three Core+ bundles available, an Core i7+8700, i5+8400, and i5+8500 plus a 16GB Optane Memory stick, all are to be discontinued. Optane caching was three years ago, however, most users didn’t find the relative little speed improvement worth the considerable higher price as a regular SSD is (for most) the way to go.

An intersting fact is that Micron made these units, and Intel and Micron halted their joint development of 3D XPoint memory (the memory tech behind Octane) back in July.

Related Stories

Intel Has to Delay Patches for new Spectre-NG Vulnerabilities - 05/07/2018 04:31 PM
Last week we reported about Spectre-NG, eight new vulnerabilities similar to Spectre, of which four tagged as critical have been detected. Intel would have been working behind scenes on patching the n...

Intel has problems with 10nm and moves volume production towards 2019 - 04/27/2018 07:49 AM
In extra notes that originate from Intels quarterly figures it looks like Intel is fighting 10nm production, according to the publication of the quarterly figures of the company it will start produc...

Intel halts developing head-up display based Vaunt glasses, also closes gadget department - 04/19/2018 09:34 AM
Intel confirmed that the Vaunt glasses are not on the market, not even for developers. The project has been completely halted, Intel also closed the underlying division, where these products are devel...

Intel Halts Certain UEFI BIOS Class Level 2 Compatibility Modes In 2020 - 11/17/2017 09:12 AM
Intel will halt UEFI bios compatibility class 0, 1 and 2 support in 2020. From that moment onwards only UEFI class 3 will be supported. This means that Intel platforms cannot boot through the Comp...

Intel Halts Xeon Phi accelerator Knights Hill Development - 11/15/2017 09:32 AM
Intel adjusted its roadmap to focus on high-performance exascale computing. Part of this .plan is scrapping the previously announced Knights Hill based Xeon Phi accelerators. The product line has be...

2 pages 1 2

rl66
Senior Member

Posts: 3373
Joined: 2007-05-31

#5629412 Posted on: 01/19/2019 12:51 PM

the idea were good, but never reach the consumer full potential:
-Over expensive price?
-Lack of support?
-Intel only?
Optane cache is dead

Undying
Senior Member

Posts: 18489
Joined: 2008-08-28

#5629413 Posted on: 01/19/2019 12:58 PM

Maybe becouse 16GB stick is nothing and makes no sense.

anticupidon
Senior Member

Posts: 6749
Joined: 2008-03-06

#5629437 Posted on: 01/19/2019 02:32 PM

Something tells me that it has to do with recent "divorce" from join venture with Micron.
Am I wrong?

nosirrahx
Senior Member

Posts: 394
Joined: 2013-04-05

#5629468 Posted on: 01/19/2019 04:21 PM

Something tells me that it has to do with recent "divorce" from join venture with Micron.
Am I wrong?

Micron might be saying the same thing I have been saying about Optane from the start. Intel has no idea how to market or implement Optane and Micron thinks they can do better.

This all started with Intel coming to market with a product that was not ready yet at a point where the intended use case for Optane cache was already in the past. They got both parts wrong.

A cheap 256GB SATA SSD and big HDD was far too cheap to make caching with Optane a viable option.

The only economically viable option for Optane isn't even supported by them. Read here for their interaction with me on this subject:

https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P0000490SECSA2/i-have-a-question-about-official-and-unoffical-optane-support?language=en-US

The synopses of that conversation was that a 2TB SATA SSD cached to a 58GB 800P Optane drive is both cheaper and faster than a 2TB NVMe SSD and that Intel does not care and wont support this.

tsunami231
Senior Member

Posts: 12789
Joined: 2003-05-24

#5629512 Posted on: 01/19/2019 08:31 PM

my uncles pc has this, and he says he dont see much diffrence, a HDD is HDD still and that cache didnt help much not like SSD does

2 pages 1 2

Post New Comment

Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.