[PCPer] Intel/Micron 3D X-Point is finally here!

[therealnickdanger]

Remember that Phase-Change Memory they started to collaborate on so many years ago?

Compared to modern NAND :
10x density
1,000x speed
1,000x endurance

http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/B...nounce-3D-XPoint-Technology-1000x-Faster-NAND

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Can't seem to find any good information on just what it stores data on. The little I've read seems like PCM or possibly RRAM, aka "memristors". Lots of important information is missing, such as how good it's endurance is, just what the 1000x faster than NAND refers to (I presume single-byte random writes), wtf the selector actually is, etc etc.


Oh, and the little I've seen about it makes it seem to be a good fit for the (insane for DRAM) transactional interface of HMC. The plot thickens...

 

[Elixer]

ETA sometime in 2016?

... cost structure and market price will lie “somewhere between DRAM and Flash” memory.

Which would mean, around $1.50-2/GB or so?

 

[ShintaiDK]

ETA sometime in 2016?

Which would mean, around $1.50-2/GB or so?

More like 2017 with the Skylake(xeon) Purley platform and Apache Pass if I had to guess.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If this is a replacement for both DRAM and NAND, and has limited endurance, will we see the end of lifetime warranties on memory?

 

[shady28]

It's endurance is supposed to be 1000 times better than NAND.

I was trying to look up the ratio of performance between NAND and typical DDR3 memory.

Problem is Intel just says this is '1000x faster' than NAND.

No one know what that means. 1000x faster access time would put this into the same category as DRAM, 1000x more bandwidth would demolish DRAM bandwidth.

But no one knows what is meant, and really the access time needs to be way way lower than NAND to replace DRAM, regardless of throughput.

Either way though, if the claims are near reality, this stuff is going to change everything.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Problem is Intel just says this is '1000x faster' than NAND.

Their presentation refers to latency.

Though they are saying that its latency is still higher than DRAM, but way lower than NAND. Perhaps they are talking about worst case scenarios.

 

[Elixer]

Did they mention if it will be an o/c'ers dream as well?

ShintaiDK, I was looking here http://fortune.com/2015/07/28/intel-micron-memory/ about the ETA being 2016

The firms will provide sample wafers to customers by the end of this year and the chips would be in actual products shipping to customers in 2016

 

[AlienTech]

SRAM is over 10 times faster than DRAM, the CPU caches uses SRAM.. I bet they have it much faster now maybe in the 1ns range.. So this should make this faster than DRAM which needs to be refreshed and would be similar to PROM arena.. If they are still using heat to do the writes that would still mean it would take more energy than NAND and DRAM's.. But writes would be far in between so over all no difference.. Also no MLC and TLC's etc so this would be just like SLC. I doubt they could get the cost lower than NAND though.. But for many applications this would be the next big thing. Instead of ROM's and SRAM in many areas they can use this. Also in industrial type applications and military where nand and dram's are not reliable enough.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Here's what I think Intel is doing.

Successful, and big companies like Intel does not put in significant investments expecting tiny returns. Yes, they fail, that's true.

I am talking about their eDRAM investments. It takes another expensive die, and it serves and extremely small market. Above the GT2 level, financial impact on a company the size of Intel is practically zero by investing on graphics. There has to be a bigger reason for this.

Recent article in Seeking Alpha and Intel patents might be a good clue.

*eDRAM might be a cache to bridge the rest of the gap, endurance and performance.*

Technology advancements are never a massive leap, but happens successively. eDRAM could be a step to that. Ultimate they'd want to replace all memory with this type of tech, but not now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

If this is a replacement for both DRAM and NAND, and has limited endurance, will we see the end of lifetime warranties on memory?

Its an SSD replacement. And it will have massive nigth and day difference on database products for example.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Did they mention if it will be an o/c'ers dream as well?

ShintaiDK, I was looking here http://fortune.com/2015/07/28/intel-micron-memory/ about the ETA being 2016

Haha. Well the first product to use it is Skylake xeons on the Purley platform

 

[JTsyo]

Its an SSD replacement. And it will have massive nigth and day difference on database products for example.

There are those that think it might sit as a cache between RAM and an SSD.

 

[R0H1T]

Originally Posted by ShintaiDK
Its an SSD replacement. And it will have massive nigth and day difference on database products for example.

There are those that think it might sit as a cache between RAM and an SSD.

Where do you think it'll land price wise, realistically speaking? If not cheap &/or dense enough it will have no role as an SSD replacement. It's kinda like hoping for HBM/HMC to be a substitute for DDR3/4 which, while entirely plausible, is not going to happen anytime soon due to price & capacity constraints.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It will be pretty similar to enterprise SSD prices it seems.

HMC will not be a substitute, only cache for a long time in the enterprise. Just imagine 500-1000GB of HMC.

 

[redzo]

Both Intel and Micron are already late to the 3d v nand party. Sorry, but this is pure investor bait fantasy.

Samsung dominates ssd land while intel is sitting on its x86 market monopoly ... and the x86 pc market is shrinking like crazy.

I'm not condemning innovation, but this seems to me as a decade ahead of its time.

It's about time to accelerate mass market availability of 3d v nand from someone else other than Samsung!

 

[The Day Dreamer]

I was about to post this news.

Does that mean that SSDs will be cheaper? I want them to.

 

[R0H1T]

Both Intel and Micron are already late to the 3d v nand party. Sorry, but this is pure investor bait fantasy.

Samsung dominates ssd land while intel is sitting on its x86 market monopoly ... and the x86 pc market is shrinking like crazy.

I'm not condemning innovation, but this seems to me as a decade ahead of its time.

It's about time to accelerate mass market availability of 3d v nand from someone else other than Samsung!

Yup the NAND market is going to explode with SK Hynix, Toshiba/Sandisk & IMFT launching their 3d NAND products sometime later this year or next year. I expect top end (enterprise) SSD capacities to hit 20TB before the end of 2017, it's already at 6TB IIRC. Good luck trying to match that with an untested memory type in a vast majority of high end systems, or even phones, flash drives et al where they're deeply entrenched with TLC.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

NAND will stick around for now but if 3D-XPoint has a 10X density advantage over NAND, it will end up eating its lunch sooner or later.

 

[R0H1T]

NAND will stick around for now but if 3D-XPoint has a 10X density advantage over NAND, it will end up eating its lunch sooner or later.

Except the "10x" density is over DRAM not NAND
Notice how it's better than the considerably less dense 2D DRAM & "up to" 1000x faster than NAND, making it clear that it has some of the best qualities of both DRAM & NAND yet doesn't beat either of them in their strong(er) suits!

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Yup, you're right about that, my mistake.

Nonetheless, I would think that they could make some significant changes to the memory hierarchy in the near future. Smaller amount of HMC on-package for lower latency and higher bandwidth than DRAM, then put some 3D-XPoint a bit farther away in larger quantity than you would of DRAM.

Something along the lines of 8-16 GB of HMC & 128-512 GB of 3D-XPoint behind that with an SSD or HDD behind that which only gets touched for large media files would be great.

 

[GreenChile]

Jason Mick did a bit of investigative work over at DT about this and found some interesting tidbits about the technology. Worth a read.
http://www.dailytech.com