Intel and Packet teamed up to give open source and commercial software projects free access to Intel Optane infrastructure technology.

Optane is an NVMe-based solid-state drive built on top of new persistent memory technology from Intel and Micron. It enables web browsers to launch up to five-times faster than a hard disk drive, according to Intel.

Developing software projects on Optane reduces transaction costs for latency-sensitive workloads and increases scale per server, the companies say.

“It delivers memory-like storage at a lower cost,” said Jacob Smith, senior vice president of engagement at Packet. “In-memory databases and caching are dramatically influenced by this technology.”

Packet provides a bare metal cloud and infrastructure automation. Under the Intel deal, it will provide on-demand access to a fleet of Intel Xeon Scalable servers with Intel Optane technology at no cost to developers.

“We want to make that hardware innovation accessible to developers,” Smith said. “Intel said we have this new technology, and it’s not just plug-and-play. They are looking to get access to the GitHub generation.”

ScyllaDB, an open source distributed NoSQL database, uses Optane drives.

“When using Optane drives, the cost of a typical Scylla configuration will drop significantly due to the reduced number of DRAM required per server,” said Phillip Tribble, technical marketing manager at ScyllaDB, on a Packet-Intel Optane blog. “A typical in-memory solution will cost more than double to achieve the performance of a combined Scylla and Intel Optane solution.”

Intel’s hardware, and its partnership with Packet to give users easy access to the infrastructure, also points to the next phase of cloud-based application development, Smith said.

“Intel, and most of the ecosystem, have really been aligned behind a hyperscaler model,” he said. “But I think the next wave is more about specialization and customization. How do we take that value in the hardware ecosystem and bring it to the end users. Complexity of hardware is an opportunity for this generation.”