Re: I'm having an Yanny / Laurel moment with the sub title :)
That happens to be unclear given how much detail really was in the announcement. It appears that Intel is going with a hybrid approach with new Xeons, and likely chipset(s), with conventional operating system(s) and applications. Optane as a non-volatile RAMdisk. I think. Probably the easiest approach. Of course, Redis and other in-memory databases do provide another approach that is easy and off-the-shelf.
Were it me, I'd have already been playing with unconventional hardware, software, operating systems, databases,... already. I've not heard so much as a squeek. Yet. What I do know, and unfortunately will never get the privilege of doing as I'm terminal, is taking all the existing design publications, textbooks, tutorials, ... using them for nice winter fires, and doing something new. Intel was going to have to redesign what/how/where/when of what the CPU does as a result of Meltdown/Spectre. Unless they go with current designs already in the pipeline. I hope they fix that, now.
I'll stop there: Too long now. I've been thinking about the what and how for a decade.