Intel Introduces Revolutionary 3D XPoint Technology: Memory And Storage Combined

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sergeyn

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Hopefully when this thing is out Toms will not have problems with image resolution. I can't see anything of what's written on that slide.
 

jaber2

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I never realized all this time memory was in 2D, this 3D is a game changer, some already claim they've already have been doing this, we might look at some patent claims before we see one in the market, also can't believe we've been on nand for the past 26+ years
 

gangrel

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"The new technology will slot in between NAND and DRAM in use-cases, so it will not supplant either existing memory technology."

Maybe for a few months. The FIRST thing I can see, given its properties, is allowing caching of HUGE amounts of data, for games, or for DB servers. How about "shut down but restart from here" PCs? How about re-imagining how an OS is deployed? Much of the OS is write occasional (updates), read many times.
 

PaulAlcorn

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I agree, this changes the whole paradigm, from Internet of Things to smart watches to laptops and phones all the way up to the datacenter. exciting times indeed!
 

gangrel

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Oh, gosh, yes. I forgot that point. The impact on small devices, be they tablets, phones, or watches, may be even more revolutionary.

All of this presupposes that the price will be competitive, of course, but yield is a large factor here. If the stuff is hard to make at first, we can expect that will improve as the manufacturing process matures. And given the density, we're looking at potentially high yields with HIGH capacities. An interesting point is, SSDs at smaller capacities run a bit slower than the same drives at higher capacities...because the smaller drives use too few chips to use all the channels.

And IIRC, they were talking about doing this at about 20 nm. Imagine when (IF?) they can implement this at 10 nm, as that process gets finalized.
 

salgado18

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The two contradictions in the announcement:

"and the new capabilities will unlock the potential of future computing platforms, from mobile devices to the largest supercomputers."

"Both companies will produce end products with the technology, and they will not be licensing it to other companies."

We can't really expect corporations to be nice people, after all they exist to make money, but still, true global progress will require more money, manpower, effort, and lots of wasted resources.
 

Phillip

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Hopefully when this thing is out Toms will not have problems with image resolution. I can't see anything of what's written on that slide.


Hit "Ctrl" and zoom in...oh wait...that makes it worse! :)
 

Blatantruth

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Does this mean we are going to see something like AMDs High Bandwidth Memory being built into the CPUs from now on? I wouldn't mind shelling out a few extra dollars if it made the whole thing a thousand fold more efficient.
 
so... this is HMC technology repackaged so that Intel does not have to pay licensing fees right? I have read the announcement on a few web pages and can't seem to see the difference between the two. The difference being that HMC is not developed by Intel, and Intel has done a good job at ignoring its existence up until now.

Still going to be glad to see this hit the market... but if Intel played ball with other companies then we could have had this several years ago; it is not exactly new technology.
 
Hopefully when this thing is out Toms will not have problems with image resolution. I can't see anything of what's written on that slide.
Been reading Tom's for over 10 years (good lord... has it been over 15 years?!?). They have not fixed their website yet, why would they fix it now?
 

haqerj

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Here's a concept that just came to mind. If I'm understanding correctly. Let's say the average system has 8gbs of ram then with the 10x density it would be 80gbs and the non volatility would mean it would hold the data after power out so then we can get rid of hard drives too. Especially if you have the 32gb equivalent which would be 320gbs.
 

haqerj

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Here's a concept that just came to mind. If I'm understanding correctly. Let's say the average system has 8gbs of ram then with the 10x density it would be 80gbs and the non volatility would mean it would hold the data after power out so then we can get rid of hard drives too. Especially if you have the 32gb equivalent which would be 320gbs.
 

haqerj

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No HMC still uses DRAM tech meaning storing electrons. This 3D Xpoint actually right on the material its made of. Probably more like a hard drive or cd
 
My question is this... if we're talking 1000x NAND performance and latency measured in "mere" nano-seconds, aren't we into the territory of RAM here? And if so, why are we talking about connecting this over the (vastly slower and higher latency) PCIe interface? How will a tech that sits "between NAND and DRAM in use cases" - but doesn't supplant either - actually revolutionise things?

Now if we are into RAM territory, and these things have 128gb (=16GB dies) as the article states... then 8 dies on a stick of DRAM would get you a 128GB stick of non-volatile RAM, connected via much faster and lower latency memory controllers. Now that would be a game changer!

But ultra fast solid-state storage over NVMe which is (according to article) priced between DRAM and NAND... that's not getting me quite so excited. We have crazy-fast drives like the Intel 750 series and they don't benefit "normal" computer users over an SSD in any measurable way. I realise this tech enables vastly faster drives again... but they're not the bottleneck anyway.

Is this not a solution in search of a problem? Maybe I'm lacking imagination, but I'm struggling to see the revolutionary effect of ultra fast storage (like hyper-speed SSDs). I sincerely hope I'm wrong - and I'd love to here other perspectives on this!
 

z2895

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Wow this seems like a game changer, but how on earth does it fit in between RAM and DRAM? Doesn't it replace both?

If you are talking about 2TB that is 1000 times faster for the same price as a current 256GB SSD how does that not totally obliterate the current SSD market?

Doesn't 1000x as fast also put it in the realm of current memory speeds, thereby removing the need for memory? Suddenly you have a computer with 2TB of memory/storage. Hence, no more loading.

RAM, SSDs, and HDs just became obsolete.
 
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