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In July 2015, Intel and Micron announced a memory technology they said would be 1,000 times faster than NAND flash. We covered the announcement the day it happened. A decade later, 3D XPoint has been built, sold as Intel Optane, deployed in HPE servers — and discontinued. Here's the whole story, and what it means if you still run Optane today.
Last updated: 2026 — Editor's note: this article originally ran on July 28, 2015 as a news item covering the 3D XPoint announcement. We've rewritten it as a retrospective, preserving our original coverage below.
What was announced in 2015
Intel and Micron unveiled 3D XPoint (pronounced "cross-point") as the first new mainstream memory category in decades: a non-volatile technology positioned between DRAM and NAND flash, promising near-DRAM speed with flash-like persistence. From our original post that day, the headline claims:
- Intel and Micron begin production on new class of non-volatile memory, creating the first new memory category in more than 25 years.
- New 3D XPoint™ technology brings non-volatile memory speeds up to 1,000 times faster than NAND, the most popular non-volatile memory in the marketplace today.
- The companies invented unique material compounds and a cross point architecture for a memory technology that is 10 times denser than conventional memory.
- New technology makes new innovations possible in applications ranging from machine learning to real-time tracking of diseases and immersive 8K gaming.
It was a genuinely exciting announcement — a rare claim of a breakthrough rather than an increment — and we said so at the time.
What actually shipped: Intel Optane
3D XPoint reached the market under Intel's Optane brand. Optane SSDs arrived first (from 2017), delivering what the technology was truly great at: extraordinarily low latency and very high endurance, even if the system-level speedup was nowhere near the headline 1,000x once controllers, interfaces, and software overhead entered the picture. The more radical product came in 2019: Intel Optane Persistent Memory (PMem) — 3D XPoint packaged in DIMM form, installed in memory slots alongside DRAM. HPE supported PMem across the ProLiant Gen10 family with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, where it enabled configurations conventional DRAM couldn't touch — like the 6 TB maximum-memory DL380 Gen10 build using twelve 512 GB PMem modules.
Why it ended
The technology worked; the business didn't. 3D XPoint lived in an awkward middle: meaningfully slower than DRAM, meaningfully more expensive than NAND, and requiring specific CPU generations and software changes to exploit its persistence. Meanwhile NAND kept improving and getting cheaper, eroding the niche from below. Micron exited the 3D XPoint business in 2021 and sold the fab that made it; Intel announced in 2022 that it was winding down the entire Optane division. No successor product line replaced it — the industry's attention moved instead toward fast NVMe flash and, for memory expansion, the emerging CXL interconnect standard.
What it means if you run Optane today
Thousands of ProLiant Gen10 servers still run Optane PMem in production, and they'll keep working — the hardware is supported in its qualified configurations, and replacement modules remain available on the secondary and new-old-stock market (the 512 GB module, 835810-B21, being the classic example). The practical guidance: if a PMem-dependent workload matters to you, keep spares, since no new modules are being manufactured; and when those servers eventually retire, plan the migration to large-DRAM configurations — today's Gen12 platforms support up to 8 TB of DDR5, which quietly exceeds what Optane-era servers achieved with persistent memory.
Frequently asked questions
What was 3D XPoint?
A non-volatile memory technology announced by Intel and Micron in July 2015, positioned between DRAM and NAND flash: much faster and more durable than NAND, cheaper and denser than DRAM, and persistent without power. It reached the market under Intel's Optane brand as SSDs and as Persistent Memory DIMMs.
Was 3D XPoint really 1,000 times faster than NAND?
At the memory-cell level the latency advantage was enormous, but at the system level, once controllers, interfaces, and software overhead were included, real-world gains were far smaller. Optane SSDs delivered exceptional latency and endurance rather than a thousandfold speedup.
What was Intel Optane Persistent Memory?
3D XPoint packaged in DIMM form, installed in memory slots alongside conventional DRAM. In HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, PMem enabled very large memory configurations, up to 6 TB in a dual-processor DL380 Gen10 using twelve 512 GB modules.
Why was Optane discontinued?
Economics. The technology sat between DRAM and NAND in both performance and cost, requiring specific CPUs and software support to justify its price, while NAND flash kept improving and getting cheaper. Micron exited the business in 2021, and Intel announced in 2022 that it was winding down Optane.
Can I still use Optane PMem in my HPE server?
Yes. Deployed Gen10 servers with supported 2nd Generation Xeon processors continue to run PMem in their qualified configurations, and replacement modules are still available even though no new ones are manufactured. If a workload depends on PMem, keeping spare modules on hand is prudent.
What replaced 3D XPoint?
No direct successor. The storage side of its niche was absorbed by increasingly fast NVMe flash, while the memory-expansion side is being addressed by the CXL interconnect standard and by the steadily growing DRAM capacities of newer platforms, with current HPE Gen12 servers supporting up to 8 TB of DDR5.
The bottom line
3D XPoint is a rare complete story in enterprise hardware: a genuine technical breakthrough, announced with a bold number, shipped as a real product, deployed in real data centers — and retired when the economics never caught up to the engineering. If you're still running Optane PMem, it continues to serve its qualified configurations well; just plan spares now and a DRAM-based future later. For today's memory options across every ProLiant generation, browse genuine HPE server memory, or contact our team — whether it's a PMem spare for a Gen10 fleet or a DDR5 build-out for Gen12, we'll confirm the right genuine HPE part before you order.
