Intel recently quietly announced that it would stop supplying pure Optane storage products to the consumer market and that there would be no replacement for those products. This marks the end of a period of Intel's success in the consumer market. It also means that Intel is at the end of a product adjustment phase in the storage business.
According to TomHardware, the products to be discontinued this time include the Autumn 900P/905P, M10, and Autumn 800P series. The last order for M10 was on January 13th, and the last shipment was on February 26th. The final order date of Aoteng 800P is January 11th, and the shipment date is February 26th. The final order date of Aoteng 900P/905P is January 15th, and the last shipment date is February 26th.
Intel will continue to offer the Ault H20 hybrid solid-state drive in the consumer market in the future, namely 3D XPoint +QLC hybrid form products. Compared with pure Ault technology products, latency, speed, and performance are not at the same level. These products' performance is not as good as that of refined Autumn storage products, and they are mainly designed for the notebook and OEM market.
Intel is currently selling its NAND flash memory business to SK Hynix, but it will keep the Autumn brand and business. The Ault 3D XPoint technology was developed by Intel and Micron and is not available to other flash memory vendors. Intel has spent a lot of money on this technology and has spent a lot of time developing it as a revolutionary storage technology of the future. This suggests that Intel will focus the Aston brand on high-margin enterprise markets in the future, such as in the data center space, offering a differentiated product that Intel has only.
To date, Macron doesn't have any products that use 3D XPoint on the market. Intel doesn't mass-produce Ault systems but instead buys Ault memory chips from Micron to meet demand in the specialized market. The industry believes that Intel may have new products aimed at the consumer market in the future, but they are in development and not ready yet.
