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13 INTEL 2020 Market Headwinds Although simpler than its DRAM counterpart, persistent memory solutions are still complicated to manufacture. DRAM itself has become commoditized, but three main suppliers have had the revenue to capitalize on bringing prices down appropriately: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. This oligopoly creates pricing challenges and respective supply risks in the event one of the three experiences a force majeure, typically an unforeseen event beyond the control of a party to fulfill an obligation. Also, two of the three companies are headquartered in Asia, along with most of the manufacturing sites, centralizing the manufacture of persistent memory to one region of the world. Delays caused by continued lockdowns of geographic areas also pose a risk to order delivery, impacting supply that would add pricing pressure. Vertical Markets Smart data centers and infrastructure is the primary vertical for persistent memory. The number of data centers constructed to house the data, both on-site and in the cloud, necessarily increases with higher data-generation rates from the IoT and AI. Persistent memory's affordability, along with rapid speed, reduces latency and raises speed to provide low-latency access to persistent data. Another vertical is the emerging trend of smart wearables, projected to be $33 billion (USD) by 2025. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and personal fitness devices have exploded in the past few years, led by Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung. Wearables typically extend the smartphone application, creating the need for additional memory and seamless data transfer. Particularly with RPM, achieving low latency is a vital performance metric to provide medical staff real-time information. Persistent memory serves this emerging market well with latency similar to DRAM while maintaining access to critical data. Product Solution: Intel Optane™ DC Persistent Memory The vertical markets and risk caused by the current DRAM supply base position persistent memory for the proliferation of the IoT and AI. The Intel Optane™ DC Persistent Memory solution leads innovation in this space, leveraging new applications focused on restart and replication. It significantly and reliably expands memory capacity and performance to achieve the fastest-possible data processing operations at a more manageable cost than its DRAM predecessors. Intel Optane™ DC Persistent Memory accelerates the IT transformation for AI by performing 13.7M input/ output operations per second. It also offers 36 percent more VMs per node at a cost 30 percent below a DRAM- alone architecture. Persistent memory reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) by improving the existing hardware packaging envelope's utilization. Furthermore, augmenting the existing DRAM with persistent memory offers the application owner flexibility to absorb peak- time demand while maintaining the workload memory that the system design specified. Conclusion AI is no longer a long-range planning goal or research project; along with the IoT and Industry 4.0, it is disrupting nearly every industry, certainly each one that touches technology. Each new application yields a new frontier with different needs for data processing. Consumer demand for fast, reliable, secure, cost- effective products squeezes existing markets while forming new ones, creating opportunities for disruptive innovation. Intel Optane™ DC Persistent Memory meets all those criteria, increasing memory while protecting access to data. It allows more VMs for less cost, faster speeds, and lower latency with higher resiliency. Persistent memory is enabling AI, and the Intel Optane™ DC Persistent Memory solution is leading the way. Learn More INTEL® OPTANE™ PERSISTENT MEMORY Figure 1: Intel Optane™ DC Persistent Memory accelerates the IT transformation for artificial intelligence by performing 13.7M input/output operations per second.