First, NVMe is a protocol to access block storage. It can be used to access any kind of block device, Optane, SSD, NVDIMM, virtual storage on EC2, etc. So it's true that the protocol is the same (well, not quite - more on this in a bit), but that's like saying a server is the same as an iPhone because they can both speak TCP/IP.
What was the "more in a bit" bit? Persistent memory (PMEM) devices like NVDIMMs and Optane can usually speak two protocols. They can either act as storage, or as memory expansion. But this memory also happens to be non-volatile.
This was sold as a revolution, but it turned out that it's not easy for current operating systems and applications to deal with memory with vastly different latencies. Also it turns out that software is buggy, and being able to lose state by rebooting is useful. And so Optane in memory mode never really caught on, and these devices were mostly used as a storage tier. However: look up MemVerge.
So you are right that it turned out to be a faster SSD, but the original promise was a lot more. And here comes the big problem: because Optane was envisioned as a separate kind of product between RAM and SSD, the big price differential could be justified. If it's just a faster SSD - well, the market has spoken.
First, NVMe is a protocol to access block storage. It can be used to access any kind of block device, Optane, SSD, NVDIMM, virtual storage on EC2, etc. So it's true that the protocol is the same (well, not quite - more on this in a bit), but that's like saying a server is the same as an iPhone because they can both speak TCP/IP.
What was the "more in a bit" bit? Persistent memory (PMEM) devices like NVDIMMs and Optane can usually speak two protocols. They can either act as storage, or as memory expansion. But this memory also happens to be non-volatile.
This was sold as a revolution, but it turned out that it's not easy for current operating systems and applications to deal with memory with vastly different latencies. Also it turns out that software is buggy, and being able to lose state by rebooting is useful. And so Optane in memory mode never really caught on, and these devices were mostly used as a storage tier. However: look up MemVerge.
So you are right that it turned out to be a faster SSD, but the original promise was a lot more. And here comes the big problem: because Optane was envisioned as a separate kind of product between RAM and SSD, the big price differential could be justified. If it's just a faster SSD - well, the market has spoken.