Intel's Response: Micron’s Control of 3D XPoint Fab Will Not Disrupt Optane Roadmap
by Anton Shilov on October 22, 2018 12:00 PM EST
Intel late on Friday said that Micron’s intention to gain full control of the IMFT joint venture will not interrupt its plans concerning products based on 3D XPoint memory. The company is confident that it will have enough time to start production of 3D Xpoint memory after Micron exercises its option to buy Intel’s stake in IMFT.
Micron currently controls 51% of IMFT, its joint venture with Intel, and has a right to buyout Intel’s share under certain conditions. After Micron proposes to buy Intel’s stake, as Micron has signified it intends to do next year, the deal will take up to twelve months to close and during that time the fab that exclusively makes 3D XPoint will be working as usual, and will make the memory for Intel Optane-branded products at near manufacturing cost. Furthermore, even after the deal closes, the fab may continue to produce memory for Intel on a foundry basis, which means that that Intel and Micron will have to come to an agreement (and price may increase). What is important is that Intel has the technical capability to produce 3D XPoint memory in different locations as well.
Intel has already finalized its Optane roadmap for the coming quarters and Micron’s intentions to gain 100% control of the fab near Lehi, Utah, will not disrupt it those intentions, Intel has said.
The full statement is presented below:
Micron’s statement is a pre-announcement. They can’t officially make the call until January 1, 2019. The operation of the IMFT factory would not change until after the close of the call, which is at Intel’s discretion for up to one year. There is no near-term change to Intel’s plans in the coming quarters—this has been part of our planning for some time now. Intel has a number of manufacturing options available to us within the time window. We’ve been shipping a broad portfolio of Intel Optane technology products for over a year with a continually expanding product line. We will continue to lead the industry with this exciting new technology.
Related Reading
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- Micron Starts Construction of Its Third NAND Fab in Singapore
- Micron Discontinues Lexar Business, Plans to Focus on Higher-Margin Products
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JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
<insert inane comments about not wanting to buy Optane anyways because the technology's not specialized for "write endurance", usage in "cold storage" scenario and other memes, despite other specialized storage technologies clearly existing for those explicit use cases>BurntMyBacon - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
<insert snarky rebuttal with unwarranted praise of Intel's infallible technical planning followed by unfounded performance claims attesting to Optane's insurmountable performance lead and laced with derogatory comments about the character of any naysayers and their familial relations>PeachNCream - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
We are talking about the guy that beat this dead horse in the comments back in 2016:"Moooooooooom! My gamin' laptop needs moar gamin' RAM!!!"
-comment source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/10395/patriot-to-re...
Sometimes, people miss on their path to adulthood.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
You shouldn't be surprised when you say stupid things and someone brings back up to you. Just stop. If you want cold-storage or write-endurance in your storage solution, look to getting tape drives or helium filled enterprise HDDs, rather than making inane posts in comments sections.After DDriver, you're the worst repeat poster in Anandtech news articles, and given that DDriver hasn't been posting frequently lately, you're appearing to be the worst right now.
PeachNCream - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
I'm not sure why you feel like there's a reason to antagonize and attempt to pick fights over differing opinions about computer storage technology. It doesn't seem like something worth getting uptight about.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
Looks like you're accusing me of shilling for Intel and/or Optane tech. I'm not. I don't own nor do I have any need for this technology in any system I own. If I wanted tiered caching storage, I'd invest in M.2 SSDs OR additional ECC RAM and provision a part of it as a dynamic RAM disk to use as a caching solution for data held on HDDs.What I want is when Anandtech makes an article about <specialized technology news> for people to stop making inane comments and whining about <speciaized technology isn't specialized for X, Y, Z use-cases>. Yeah, that's pretty blatantly obvious that Optane isn't meant for cold-storage or write endurance when it's specifically a speed-tuned storage solution (which isn't even officially supported as a caching solution in any but intel's latest chipsets, buy now good goy!).
If you have nothing to say about the technology itself, then just don't post. By making overtly inane comments I hope to show you and others that making inane comments to a news article isn't furthering any meritable discussion of what the technology DOES do and what it means for the industry as a whole.
alacard - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
The technology was sold on a blatant lie from the beginning based on every metric.Oy vey, is that an inane comment by JoeyJoJo123's standards? Yes?
Oopsie, I dun and gone upset the angelic defender of Optane.
Better sit back and wait for the scathing rebuttal while shiverin' in ma boots.
PeachNCream - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
Micron seems to be exploring its Optanes and that seems like an Intel-igent move that gets right to the XPoint in a way that makes the future look fab-ulous.PaoDeTech - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
It's a phase changing moment for Micron, at the cross-road it's taking the path with variable resistance.BurntMyBacon - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
Now that we've got the extremist views out of the way, we can talk about what this means for Optane and the market. I'm imagining that the cost coming out of an entirely Intel owned fab will be higher than the current IMFT fab. Of course their may be some vertical integration efficiencies to be had to offset that. Given the Intel's current fabrication capacity and demand, things will be tight. Optimistically, if 10nm comes online quickly enough AND older fabs can be converted to handle optane production (memory production != Chipset/CPU production) in time, then the cost may only see minor adjustments. In any case, I'm expecting upward price movement after the switch until the following generatio. It's just a question of how much.