3D XPoint™ Breakthrough Memory Technology

[ElZorro]

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/int ... technology

New Class of Memory Unleashes the Performance of PCs, Data Centers and More

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• Intel and Micron begin production on new class of non-volatile memory, creating the first new memory category in more than 25 years.
• New 3D XPoint™ technology brings non-volatile memory speeds up to 1,000 times faster1 than NAND, the most popular non-volatile memory in the marketplace today.
• The companies invented unique material compounds and a cross point architecture for a memory technology that is 10 times denser than conventional memory2.
• New technology makes new innovations possible in applications ranging from machine learning to real-time tracking of diseases and immersive 8K gaming.

...

[Sabre]

Sounds a lot like HBM from AMD! With memory bandwidths increasing so much on the PC side, things in super computing are going to get very interesting. Traditionally, only mainframes had this type of bandwidth.

[Sabre]

Everyone is doing it

The top dog in the flash industry has just barked out loud and strong; emphasising its 3D flash process lead, Samsung is mass-producing 48-layer, 256Gbit 3D NAND chips, essentially tech SanDisk/Toshiba is hopeful of shipping next year.

...
Here’s the gee-whiz bit: the 48-layer chips use 3D Charge Trap Flash in a structure with 1.8 billion channel holes through the 48 layers, with a total of 85.3 billion cells. Give them 3 bits each and, Sammy said, we have 256 billion data bits.

This 48-layer V-NAND uses 30 per cent less power than the 32-layer predecessor, confirming a lithography shrink is involved (to our way of thinking). Its production process is 40 per cent better than the 128Gbit chip’s process, so good news for production costs.

Sammy intends to bring out 2TB-plus SSDs for consumer use (think 4TB versions of 850 SSD) with these chips, as well as growing its high-density SSD sales for the enterprise and data centre storage markets with PCIe NVMe and SAS interfaces.

The world of IO-bound, waiting-for-data, applications is facing a radical speed-up.

Amazing times we live in!

[zaxrex]

Funny since "Sammy" (wtf, too cozy or too lazy?) is putting in adds for their 850 series 120Gb3D V-NAND SSDs at $800 for 2TB with 5 year warranty, or $1000 for 10 years.
Probably will drop by half when the new 48-layer ones come out.
I like half.

[Sabre]

Well, here is where they are going with it!

At the Flash Memory Summit in California, Samsung has unveiled what appears to be the world's largest hard drive—and somewhat surprisingly, it uses NAND flash chips rather than spinning platters. The rather boringly named PM1633a, which is being targeted at the enterprise market, manages to cram almost 16 terabytes into a 2.5-inch SSD package. By comparison, the largest conventional hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital currently max out at 8 or 10TB.

The secret sauce behind Samsung's 16TB SSD is the company's new 256Gbit (32GB) NAND flash die; twice the capacity of 128Gbit NAND dies that were commercialised by various chip makers last year. To reach such an astonishing density, Samsung has managed to cram 48 layers of 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND into a single die. This is up from 24 layers in 2013, and then 36 layers in 2014.

...

At the Flash Memory Summit, as reported by Golem.de, Samsung showed off a server with 48 of these new SSDs, with a total storage capacity of 768 terabytes and performance rated at 2,000,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second). By comparison, the consumer-grade SSD that you have in your PC is probably capable of around 10,000-90,000 IOPS, depending on the workload.

[ElZorro]

Huh, I wonder what someone would need all those IOPS for.

[Sabre]

I'm guessing it would load my Steam games quickly, hehe

[zaxrex]

sounds like a great platform for multiple virtual server hosting.

[Sabre]

Yep, especially VDI stuff where IOPS is one of the most important things!