Intel and Micron create 3D XPoint: a smaller, faster, more secure memory technology

It's down to money. They closed nearly all U.S. rare earths mines (clearly of strategic interest) and allowed China to supply 95% of the stuff, to their detriment.

Are you going to be surprised! If Intel can lower prices by 25% every quarter on their processors, they can make 3D XPOINT a standard memory very quickly.

Semiaccurate is not wrong here. Currently there is no interface that can utilize full speed of this memory. PCIe 3.0 x16 is not fast enough.

From http://www.computerworld.com/article/2954492/computer-hardware/that-new-3d-xpoint-memory-could-last-forever.html

Gartner Vice President Joseph Unsworth believes it will be years before consumers see 3D XPpoint in their PCs or laptops "because cost and performance is far more valuable to data centers and in-memory computing applications than it is for typical consumer usage, which is quite price sensitive."

But it is still not durable enough to replace DRAM on common application such as game graphic. New machine architecture will be required to take advantage of this new breed of memory.

@ProfHankD I guess for a lot of application, particularly devices, comms, IoT, rather than general purpose computers, the architecture could shift to something like the latest Intel CPUs with a fairly small/fast eDRAM on-CPU, then everything else in XPoint. That would support a lot of use cases where data is created, processed and flows to storage, where there isnt a need for large and varied data processing in-memory.

It will still need load levelling algorithms which might slow it down some and speed is currently critical in achieving fast electronic shutter and HD footage. Also if its used to replace DRAM in a camera it will put a finite life on the use of the device much like shutter count so I wouldn't be too keen on that.

Yes exactly - if the device is loaded with e.g. a 10TB chip there may in fact for many or even most applications be relatively few write cycles because you won't need to move the data around like you do with RAM. Once written to Xpoint storage it won't need to be moved, just erased when no longer needed. Programs and compilers will very likely need to be rewritten however - there is likely to be the requirement for some RAM for volatile working storage.

You're assuming that they'll use adequate amounts of storage for proper load levelling. Unfortunately image processing is not your average code, its mostly sequential and needs to read and write every data value multiple times. Noise reduction might require 16 copies of the image and memory takes the full write hit if its the whole file or split into windows thereof. Believe me they will take the chance to build in redundancy.

@Richard Butler - the way the phrase is now commonly used is itself a complete misrepresentation of the phenomena it describes. The state change of an electron involves distances in the order of pico-metres. The state change is often followed by a reversion to the previous state.

So you're asking for a tiny change, followed by another tiny change is the opposite direction. I don't think this is the way forward for sensor development.

Yes, I'm being a pedant (and probably an uninformed one too - we'll see soon enough).

It's not 1000x faster than SSD's, that would be insane. It can tolerate more write/read cycles, i.e. less likely to fail due to simple use.

SATA is an interface. mSATA is a 6Gb/sec transfer speed solid state memory. Holding up to 1 TB in capacity in a very small small form factor. Check them out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=msata&N=100008118&isNodeId=1

http://www.videodevices.com/products/portable-video-recorders/pix-e

"The PIX-E records to the affordable, super fast SpeedDrive, an industry standard mSATA drive contained within a custom-designed enclosure. The SpeedDrive, which plugs directly into the PIX-E, doubles as a USB 3.0 thumb drive for very high speed offload to any computer without the need for a special cable or drive docking station. mSATA drives are available in sizes ranging from 128 GB to 1 TB."

This video recorder mSATA storage was just released today, July 29th, so I don't think this is a particularly old solid state storage technology, mick.

http://www.videodevices.com/news/video-devices-news/pix-e5-and-speeddrive-now-shipping

@Oleg yes, it is 1000x faster and 1000x more read cycles. It's almost as fast as DRAM and huge capacity chips are possible in 3D fomats. There are a lot of applications, but as it could easily replace both DRAM and NAND for some applications it is an innovation that we can't even really see what it's going to be used for at this point.

@Francis - you are confusing things, mSATA is an adapter specification, not storage technology, there are two variants, one acts as a smaller SATA, the other is pci based and is for example used in some apple products like air (there are asus laptops that also use slightly different drives but the same thing - pci for miniature ssd).

Either way, this is a potential replacement for flash (nand) with higher price and lower latency. If this appears in cameras it will probably be used as a buffer for images before writing them to SD card or wherever. It could eliminate the need for super fast SD, just slap 16GB of this in camera and have buffer for over 300 images... Then empty it to SD as fast as it can, in the background.

@ otto: If you don't rightly know something for suret here is no shaming in reading up on it, like for instance here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#mSATA

Now, maybe I didn't follow you night here -- are you saying that mSATA is an Apple Airhead product, or what?

You are still talking about interfaces. I am talking about solid state storage media. New Egg has almost a 100 mSATA solid state drives for sale -- why do you keep harping about SATA and mSATA interfaces then ad nausea?

BTW -- a SAS drives is not the same as an mSATA solid state memory drive, AFAIK.

@ otto: you seem to get none of it still.

Say, you want to buy a solid state storage memory drive. You do not want to buy an interface -- but instead, you want to buy a solid state storage memory drive. So far, so good, you might say?

Okay, so you may go here to do your shopping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=msata&N=100008118&isNodeId=1

Still with me, Amigo? Okay, so if you look at the left column for "Narrow Your Choices" and drop down the options, you will see that 3D VERTICAL is already an available technology. Yeah, it is not 3D Xpoint, but 3D nonetheless.

Sometime getting all one's technical information from press releases can be detrimental to one's general appreciation and understanding of things.

I agree. "It" is crap.

3D vertical SSD tech and 3D xpoint are not related. The former is just an architecture that allows SSD drives to be larger in the same footprint. It does not increase a drive's speed or its read/write lifespan.

In contrast, the tech discussed here is a completely different technology that is more closely related to DRAM than normal hard drive technology. Think of it as being able to use RAM as your hard drive. Indeed, with this technology, there may no longer be a need to distinguish between RAM and persistent storage.

The catch is pretty obvious - it will be expensive.

Even if it weren't significantly more expensive to manufacture (which, given the nature of its construction it undoubtedly will be) it will be in high demand - that means the products will be able to command a hefty price premium.

With Intel behind it, the price will go UP. Not down. Rest assured.

The deal won't likely be allowed. Unless something is about to replace Micron.

And Micron has an obvious connection to Boise National Labs.

Why harder to wipe? Simply overwrite everything, with today's speeds it's quite speedy process.

To wipe data (assuming you don't want to use the drive again), put it in the kitchen oven at 200C, and bake for 24 hours. Pretty little on it will be readable after this. Trust me.

rkumar,

Yep, that works.

But as you say "assuming..".

I would use a hammer, about 20-30 strokes should do it, LOL..