Breakthrough Memory Technology from Intel and Micron

amirm

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Apr 2, 2010
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Revolutions in computer technology don't appear often. I still remember in early 1980s reading about Toshiba's development of NAND Flash memory technology which we use today in all of our portable devices and computer SSDs. As valuable as NAND Flash technology has been in speeding up computers as they replaced hard disks, they are pretty clunky underneath. The cells wear out over time and operations like writing to them is very slow as rows have to be erased and then data written to them. Random access to individual locations in memory does not exist as it does in DRAM that is used for processor memory. DRAM is fast but is volatile so when you turn off your computer, everything goes away.

The holy grail in memory technology has been memory that is as fast as DRAM but also non-volatile (i.e. remembers its data when power is removed). And dense and cheap as Flash is today. Seems like that promise is here now in the form of new memory type from Intel and Micron called 3D XPoint (read 3D cross-point). 3D XPoint is non-volatile like NAND Flash, can be 10 times denser (although first products are the same size), and "up to" 1000 times faster. It also has 1000 times higher endurance (i.e. lack of cell failure) than NAND Flash. These are remarkable improvements.

Sample silicon will be available later this year with products appearing in 2016.

The downside is that the cost is higher than NAND Flash. According to Intel, it is somewhere between DRAM and NAND Flash. That means that NAND Flash is not going to be replaced with this technology in cost sensitive devices. Your cheap laptop will still use an SSD driver or heaven forbid hard disk. But you could build a far higher performance computer using 3D XPoint as your main storage. Gamers should be happy campers next year :). Those of us editing high resolution video and images should also benefit quite well.

This is truly a game changer in computing. CPUs have always been far, far faster than our ability to feed them data. We finally make a massive jump forward in data storage. Kudos to both companies for enabling this.

Here is their press announcement event although don't expect to see much more detail than what I explained:

 

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