Paper Title: A New Scenario for Emerging Memories and Markets

Paper Abstract: Recent public speculation is that Optane/3D Xpoint PCM technology has failed to meet market goals and that it will not continue to be developed by Intel. We examine what the technology and market challenges were for Optane including cost and performance and what this means for other new memories. We present new scenarios for emerging memories in the next ten years including technical requirements, market requirements, as well as investment and partnerships that are needed. The realistic scenarios are very different from the current “Universal memory”, “DRAM replacement”, “Persistent Memory”, “NAND/HDD replacement” narratives we see today.

Paper Author: Mark Webb, Analyst, MKW Ventures

Author Bio: Mark Webb is principal analyst and advisor at MKW Ventures Consulting LLC. His focus areas are memory and storage technology evaluation and business development. Mark is a recognized expert in NAND, DRAM, 3D XPoint, MRAM, ReRAM technologies and costs. Mark was previously Manufacturing Director in the NVM Solutions Group at Intel Corporation and Product Engineering Manager at IM Flash Mark's current focus areas are new memory technologies, DRAM and NAND scaling and Cost, and Memory market analysis