Intel Optane SSDs may be a no-go until 2018

When Intel first unwrapped Optane I had a feeling it was too good to be true. That was about 1.5 years ago and there's still little evidence of 3D Xpoint technology arriving anytime soon for the enthusiast market, especially not at a reasonable price.

ComputerWorld remarks Intel remains mum about the release of its Optane SSDs and points out initial deployment is aimed at the more profitable datacenter market, and not gaming PCs as Intel had promised:

Based on recent developments, it's still hard to predict what products Intel will target with the first Optanes and what the capacity will be. Intel said Optane SSDs would first be available for gaming PCs, and then enterprise products. However, it's looking likely that the first high-capacity Optane products will be targeted at servers, which need fast throughput.

The chipmaker has said the superfast Optane could speed up gaming by pre-loading chapters and buffering large chunks of games. That points to Intel targeting Optanes toward high-end PCs not as primary storage, but for low-capacity caching.

Based on what's currently public information, Optane may be largely a no-show for gaming PCs until 2018. Micron will use the same 3D XPoint technology for its QuantX products, but there's not much news about those either.