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Intel Optane

Intel'southward Optane memory is the start "new" storage technology to appear on the consumer and enterprise market place since the earliest iterations of SLC NAND flash started showing up in enterprise solutions a decade agone. While the products have, thus far, been limited to a small piece of the consumer and enterprise markets, Intel intends to continue investing in the technology and to bring more products to market, PCWorld reports. Long term, the visitor wants to push button all local storage out of the market altogether.

Intel is also pushing hard for 5G standard development; its XMM 8060 modem is supposed to exist one of the first 5G radios to market when it arrives in mid-2019 or early 2022, and the XMM 7560 is its get-go CDMA-capable modem, which could help the visitor accept over Apple's iPhone business organisation.

In short, Intel is making some major plays into cellular connectivity, and its concept for cloud-continued PCs is a directly issue.

OptaneSSDUse

Right now, Intel is withal by and large positioning Optane every bit an enterprise memory.

Intel'southward basic idea is that consumers would have an Intel Optane drive every bit a cache drive (how large is not specified), with all other information being streamed out of the cloud. Now, in theory, this should work reasonably well, provided the Optane bulldoze is large plenty to continue critical local files handy, and PCWorld points out that services similar Microsoft OneDrive currently bear witness files as being stored locally that are, in some cases, actually stored in the cloud. And while the battle betwixt thin client and fatty client processing has literally been going on since computers were get-go powerful plenty to back up remote terminals, we've never seen the unabridged industry embrace the kind of cloud-connected PC that Intel at present thinks it can push.

And for proficient reason. While this concept could admittedly work for some specific use-cases like educational activity and businesses where local storage needs are pocket-sized and security is paramount, it's a terrible thought for the general consumer market.

First, 5G refers to a cellular standard, not a blazon of Wi-Fi, and cellular data is anything but cheap. The more of the day-to-day files someone uses that go shoved into the cloud, the more information they're going to chew through on an ongoing basis. If you lot've ever tried to utilise the cellular or Wi-Fi networks in congested areas or pinnacle usage times, you're enlightened performance in these situations can crater and stay that way for long periods of time. I've stayed in gorgeous hotels with the Wi-Fi performance you'd expect from a router cached under 30 anxiety of physical.

It'due south not fifty-fifty accurate to say that connectivity in these areas is improving. Sometimes, information technology isn't. I moved to upstate NY in 2022, and while I'm scarcely a i-homo Michelin guide, the same places where I noticed having terrible cell service in 2022 have terrible cell service in 2022. Nor is there any reason to think that 5G, which requires more than base stations and towers, thanks to its reliance on shorter millimeter wave networks, is going to lead to some kind of investment revolution courtesy of AT&T. Especially not with the FCC angle over backwards to find reasons to declare internet broadband a solved problem in the get-go place.

If you're a gamer who cares well-nigh visual fidelity, the but affair cloud services gets you is a substandard title yoked to video compression and input lag. If y'all're editing video, or working on a 3D rendering projection, streaming in resources is an obvious step backwards compared with having them stored locally. Intel pushed back at this argument past framing it in terms of hard drives, pointing out that the performance affect of putting an HDD in the cloud is approximately equal to the performance of a SATA-based difficult drive if connected via 5G. Just even if we take the company at its word, we're ignoring the fact that people dumped hard drives and went solid-state for a reason.

Are at that place uses for this type of technology? Sure. Always have been. And people take been installing thin terminals e'er since sparse terminals became A Thing. Simply that doesn't make them a nifty solution for the market as a whole, and even if nosotros see systems like this appeal to a larger range of customers, they're not going to address the needs of anyone who actually wants to do serious work with a system. They would, however, help Intel sell a lot of modems. Once you know that, yous know pretty much everything else most why this is suddenly such an interesting idea to Chipzilla.