For those saying the initial claims were way overblown, 1000x speed, etc.. I agree. But, to play both sides, the speed of typical SSDs has improved a lot in the last year or 2. Also, Intel/Micron may be slightly underselling the tech to manage expectations and save faster products for the future, so they can sell us the same product again. Let me guess, next year the speed of XPoint will double. And the density will double. And this will happen for years. That's how they do it. They probably have a deal with Micron to hold back on speed increases for years.
Just like the move from HDD to SSD, the tech community will say it doesn't make any sense, and the old architecture will stick around. I remember so many commenters saying SSDs just didn't have the capacity to replace HDDs, this wasn't long ago. Now they're saying XPoint isn't fast enough to justify the high price etc. This is just the path technology takes. Companies sit on the technology's potential. This is a good 'foundation' for the future, and eventually XPoint will outstrip the potential of SSDs. Especially as companies find new ways to take advantage of the non volatility. Imagine if a future iPhone turns off instead of going to sleep to save more battery. Imagine if restarting your computer took less than a millisecond. Pretty soon, mobile devices won't need 3 GB of RAM, only 100 MB, making the devices even smaller. There may be different classes of apps, and even sections of apps, some classes that never need to be loaded into memory, like Google Sheets or Netflix. Makes your battery last longer, and zero app loading times. And imagine if there was an emergency and your phone ran out of battery, you could plug it in and make a call as fast as an old landline phone.
Just like the move from HDD to SSD, the tech community will say it doesn't make any sense, and the old architecture will stick around. I remember so many commenters saying SSDs just didn't have the capacity to replace HDDs, this wasn't long ago. Now they're saying XPoint isn't fast enough to justify the high price etc. This is just the path technology takes. Companies sit on the technology's potential. This is a good 'foundation' for the future, and eventually XPoint will outstrip the potential of SSDs. Especially as companies find new ways to take advantage of the non volatility. Imagine if a future iPhone turns off instead of going to sleep to save more battery. Imagine if restarting your computer took less than a millisecond. Pretty soon, mobile devices won't need 3 GB of RAM, only 100 MB, making the devices even smaller. There may be different classes of apps, and even sections of apps, some classes that never need to be loaded into memory, like Google Sheets or Netflix. Makes your battery last longer, and zero app loading times. And imagine if there was an emergency and your phone ran out of battery, you could plug it in and make a call as fast as an old landline phone.
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