Intel and Micron announce 3D XPoint Memory - 1000x Faster Than NAND

[WYP]

Intel and Micron announce 3D XPoint memory which is up to 1000x faster than NAND.



Read more on Intel and Micron's ultra fast 3D XPoint Memory.

 

[Chopper3]

Presumably for best performance this will need to be accessed directly via QPI/DMI rather than via PCIe or similar? - you'd be throwing away the benefits going over a slower bus such as NVMe

I'm reasonably sure this'll need a new CPU generation to support it, is that a good assumption?

What CPU generation will this work with, when will it be released and do we know if it will it be introduced on the consumer (i3/5/7) range or the professional (Xeon) range first?

When they say '1000 x faster' do we know if that is that across the board, i.e. is latency reduced equally?

Do we know what sizes these initial units will come in? They mention 128GB blocks but will they be shipping JUST 128GB devices or 'multiples'?

Thanks a ever TTL!

 

[WYP]

Presumably for best performance this will need to be accessed directly via QPI/DMI rather than via PCIe or similar? - you'd be throwing away the benefits going over a slower bus such as NVMe

I'm reasonably sure this'll need a new CPU generation to support it, is that a good assumption?

What CPU generation will this work with, when will it be released and do we know if it will it be introduced on the consumer (i3/5/7) range or the professional (Xeon) range first?

When they say '1000 x faster' do we know if that is that across the board, i.e. is latency reduced equally?

Do we know what sizes these initial units will come in? They mention 128GB blocks but will they be shipping JUST 128GB devices or 'multiples'?

Thanks a ever TTL!

Yes it would need a new CPU to support using this as a directly linked memory pool, like DRAM, which is not even on the next generation of server chips from Intel.

It will likely be seen first in a super fast NVMe SSD, or perhaps on mobile devices as a cheaper alternative to DRAM.

Production will be in low quantities at first, meaning that we will not be seeing much of this for a few years.

In terms of speed and latency it is much faster than NAND in almost every way, but seems to not be quite as fast as modern DDR4, though this memory is non-volatile.

This new memory will be great for supercomputing and as ultra fast storage, as it can pack higher capacity than DRAM and is much faster than SSDs. On the consumer side it will take ages to see this outside of the crazy high end.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Can't believe I missed this news report!

This is some very amazing news and quiet a leap in memory architecture. Though I agree that we won't be seeing these for a long long time. I'd say 2020ish is when these start to become relevant in terms price/GB and actual uses such as replacing DRAM or at the very least plans to do so. It'll probably come to storage and mobile first. Think PCs will be last.