My recollection (from the presentation when Jim was in Perth)...

My recollection (from the presentation when Jim was in Perth) was that "Optain" (or 3D Xpoint) was hardly even worth a wry smile and a shrug of the shoulders (There's just a in my notes about it)

I recall it being described as a proprietary solution to the gap between memory and storage drives, but very complex (using lots of hardware), really power hungry and expensive. It is not really a solution in the memory hardware area, but an aggregation of technologies to make a buffer which is speeds up the apparent process rate of solid state drives using NAND, and can be inserted in compatible systems to produce a faster result.

Jim treated other players in this area with total respect .... but he really didn't give this tech the time of day.

I think it may be a ploy by Intel to fill the gap in the short term which will eventually be taken up by real technology .... such as 4DS reram.