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Now reading: Intel and Micron create 3D XPoint: a smaller, faster, more secure memory technology 89 comments

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

Published Jul 29, 2015 | dpreview staff

3D Xpoint™ technology wafers are currently running in production lines at Intel Micron Flash Technologies fab. Image and caption courtesy of Intel

Chip makers Micron and Intel have announced a new form of computer memory that promises faster, more reliable storage than current technologies, in a smaller space and at similar prices. The technology could reduce the distinction between memory and storage within computers and provide a faster, more stable way of storing large Raw and video files.

The companies say that the 3D XPoint technology offers many of the speed advantages of DRAM (used as computer memory) with the price and storage capabilities of the NAND technology used in the solid state drives that are increasingly replacing hard drives. The new technology will tolerate 1000x more read/write cycles than NAND does, the companies say, making it more dependable than current SSDs.

Rather than using hard-to-build transistors as switches, the 3D XPoint (pronounced cross-point) technology features billions of individual memory cells sandwiched between arrays of wires set at right-angles to one another. Applying different voltages to specific pairs of wires allows individual memory cells to be addressed. The memory cells can each hold a single binary bit of data and can switch states much more quickly than existing technologies.

The companies herald 3D XPoint as the first new memory technology to be developed since NAND, over 25 years ago. Like NAND, 3D XPoint is non-volatile, meaning that it holds its data even when unpowered but, unlike NAND, it is tolerant of many more read/write cycles, making it more attractive as a long-term storage medium. In addition, the speed of the system is said to be nearer that of DRAM, making it much quicker to access the increasingly large data files that contemporary photography and videography can create.

The examples shown-off by Intel and Micron are based on two layers of memory cells but say that this could be increased. Equally, while the relatively simple fabrication of the structures allows them to pack data more densely than existing NAND designs, both makers say that this can be further improved as lithographic production pushes towards ever smaller scales.

Products based on the technology should be on the market as early as next year, the developers say.

Source: Intel

Tags: accessory-news, storage, technology

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Charrick1

That's great! At least thus far, there doesn't appear to be a down-side, but there are many up-sides! I love when technological breakthroughs occur! Thanks goes to those helping to invent all of this!

Aug 1, 2015permalink

Ivan Glisin

The inspiration seems to be taken from magnetic core memory modules used in the 1950s, 60s and 70s: identical addressing principle (cross-wires), also 3D stacked, but different bit-memory technology (individual magnetic cores vs. semiconductor cells) and reading mechanism. Simple, fast and very low-power, I am looking forward to see applications and operating systems making no distinction between storage and main memory - zero loading time, no need to save working files. Could be very interesting!

Aug 1, 2015permalink

duartix

I say: "Burn the witch!"
If this gets into a chip inside the camera, how the hell am I supposed to recover those deleted pictures (that I shouldn't be taking in the first place) from the SD card???
Talk about a workflow knightmare...
;)

Jul 30, 2015*permalink

vbuhay

This will be the death of Hard Disk tech....SSDs will be the standard of bulk and cache storage and maybe DRAM. This technology might also be applicable to Micro Processors, DSPs and who knows - sensors?....Flash is on its way out as well. The largest Flash memory manufacturer Samsung must be shaking in its boots. Watch how the price of Flash NAND devices go down. 25Cents/ Giga Byte flash and lower.... XQD, CF are both dead... SD or Micro SD from here on!!!! It will be interesting the next 10-20 months and I mean months not years.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

exfidevivo

In that same time the hard disk will incorporate HAMR, heat assisted magnetic recording with spot size in the tens of nanometers and comensurate higher density and lower latency. The new 3D memory will go into many portable things that cant have a spinning disk but the www will still live on the hard disk.

Aug 2, 2015permalink

Sean Nelson

That depends an awful lot on its cost, which isn't mentioned in the article. Given the extra fabrication steps that seem likely to be required for a chip like this, I suspect that this kind of memory is not going to be cheap. I have a feeling that hard drives are still going to be around for a fair while yet because they balance low cost with tremendous capacity. There's still a huge need for bulk storage that doesn't have to be super-fast.

Aug 3, 2015permalink

RichRMA

No wonder China wants Micron?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/us-micron-tech-m-a-tsinghuaunigroup-idUSKCN0PO02B20150715

Jul 30, 2015permalink

vbuhay

Yep, but that will not happen - National security issues. if not anti-trust.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

RichRMA

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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

exfidevivo

So Tsinghua (Unisplendour) didn't get Micron but they have 15% of Western Digital just as it merges with HGST (Hitavhi/IBM Hard Disk Drives) and then bought SandDisk and then announced joint venture for both HDD and SSD memory in China. It's all those Terra bites of "useless" pictures no doubt.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/09/western_digital_goes_jving_in_china/
And of course that "will not happin" LOL - cheers

Nov 10, 2015*permalink

maxnimo

If this can handle 8K - 240 fps video I will finally be happy.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

micksh6

Forget it. This is not for us, consumers. Two catches - price and availability.

"you won’t be seeing XPoint USB drives and are unlikely to see XPoint SSDs for the consumer market, it will be limited to high-end performance critical storage applications with interfaces that can support the speed. And can support the cost."
http://semiaccurate.com/2015/07/29/intel-micron-introduce-new-memory-type-3d-xpoint/

Jul 29, 2015permalink

DVT80111

where is your source .. Semiaccurate Lol

Anything new will be expensive, then will get down to earth gradually. This memory will be found every where on the IoT.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

vbuhay

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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

micksh6

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."

Jul 30, 2015permalink

luigibozi

First it will be NVMe for consumers (like today SATA), and maybe after this becomes obsolete we could see the new technology running. But what for?! I think the software has to be optimized, and not only for MOBILE, as it seems to be the trend.

Jul 31, 2015permalink

The Squire

If the idea is to replace system RAM with this tech it better be *much* more than 1,000 more resilient than current NAND, because it'll be hit a lot lot more frequently than if it were just used as an alternative to SSD.

That said, in cameras it will work well, as buffer memory is written to infrequently (compared to the main RAM of a PC). The distinction between buffer and card will be removed (assuming someone standardizes a very fast interface to this memory tech).

Jul 29, 2015*permalink

ProfHankD

Just to put some numbers: current flash memory can only survive about 10K write cycles per cell, so this must be around 10M. The same kind of "wear leveling" (deliberate cycling of which blocks are written) should make 10M enough for the life of most consumer devices. And yes, conventional systems use DRAM raw buffers and write things to flash which is ~1500x slower, whereas this sounds to be within a factor of 2 of DRAM speed, so you could skip DRAM and treat the non-volatile storage for a file directly as a memory-mapped raw buffer.

This is potentially a very big deal. I teach the intro computer architecture course at the University of Kentucky and the implications of this new tech might be the biggest change I've had to make to the course content in a decade.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

DVT80111

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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

The Squire

@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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Zdman

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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

ProfHankD

DVT80111, The Squire: Actually, 10M write cycles/cell probably is enough to replace DRAM. There are two tricks. One is that the vast majority of "memory" accesses are actually satisfied by on-chip SRAM caches, so most memory writes never actually get to DRAM. The second trick is wear leveling: basically, if you have an object whose value is frequently rewritten, you essentially keep moving the object's physical address so the write count on any one cell doesn't saturate until all cells do. This type of management is already done in SSDs, and is why they're usable despite the 10K write lifespan, but it will take a little new compiler/OS/processor architecture tech to do this with main memory.

My quick little back-of-the-envelope computation of the expected lifespan, given the above tricks, would put first failure around 5-10 years for a typical high-end PC using this instead of DRAM... and ECC (as used in SSDs) could extend that. DRAM actually gets (soft) errors way more often....

Jul 30, 2015permalink

CraigArnold

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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Zdman

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.

Aug 3, 2015permalink

ProfHankD

Zdman: one word: CACHE (and/or explicitly-managed local memory, somewhat like we have in GPUs). Performance on things like image processing would be terrible without caches big enough to hold what you're working on, and I'd expect this new memory tech to be paired with processors having cache sized in GBs. Writes that never make it past cache don't count.

Generally tweaking system software and hardware design to minimize writes to XPoint memory sounds like a great research opportunity for folks like me.... ;-)

Aug 3, 2015permalink

digiart

This is HUGE! It's the final nail in HDD's coffin.
But what would be great was a quantum leap in sensor technology.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

Remember Edgar Allan Poe: "The Premature Funeral."

Jul 29, 2015permalink

(unknown member)

You realise a "quantum leap" is a very small thing, right?

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Richard Butler

@BartyLobethal - that's a misrepresentation of how the phrase has always (quite correctly) been used. It's 'quantum' in that you can't make small, evolutionary, steps towards it: you have to jump to the entirely new state in one leap.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

(unknown member)

@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).

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Richard Butler

BartyLobethal - I'm not saying that it's an incorrect description of quantum phenomena, I'm just saying that that's not what the phrase (conventionally) refers to. It's not about the scale of the change, it's about the nature of the change: you have to make the whole leap, you can't make small steps towards it.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

(unknown member)

Richard - I take your point.

Given the ubiquity of Sony sensors and the way in which developments at Sony spookily appear some distance away in other factories (eg Nikon), I propose we now refer to this as 'Sony Entanglement'.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Richard Butler

I like that. Wonder if I can sneak it into something I'm writing.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

We already have something quite good now like this, called mSATA. Way better than 2.5-inch SSD laptop drives.

If Intel has got anything to do with this, it'll likely be another "Thunderbolt for Windows PC" fiasco.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Richard Butler

Isn't mSATA simply an interface?

Jul 29, 2015permalink

valamart

do you realise the difference between an interface and a storage technology?

this is huge, and the potential applications are incredible, especially for the server market

Jul 29, 2015permalink

EthanP99

I have a mSATA laptop

starts up in 6 seconds

Jul 29, 2015permalink

micksh6

2Francis Carver
mSATA is an old interface with 3Gb/s (some devices support 6Gb/s) max speed. Most good 2.5" laptop SSDs are limited by SATA 6Gb/s speed. That's why mSATA is obsolete now and it's being replaced by faster M.2.

And this thing is 1000x faster than SSDs, meaning that even M.2 won't be close to be fast enough. So, your comment "We already have something quite good now like this" doesn't make any sense.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Oleg Vinokurov

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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

micksh6

Read source article. It says "up to 1,000 times faster than NAND". It's not insane as they compare this with DRAM.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

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

Jul 30, 2015permalink

CraigArnold

@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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

otto k

@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.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

@ 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?

Jul 30, 2015permalink

otto k

You did not follow. mSATA as a pci to sdd interface is already used in, for example, Apple air, some Asus (and dell?) laptops, etc.

You could put a rotating magnetic drive instead of nand flash and it would work. There are also ram based drives as well. Also adapters that present networked storage as locally connected SAS drives (we use them in our servers), etc. All of this has nothing to do with 3d xpoint or nand slc/mlc/tlc, memristors, ReRAM and similar. That's why I said you were confusing things. One is storage technology, other is not. It's like saying BSI-CMOS EF mount with IS.

Jul 31, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

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.

Jul 31, 2015permalink

otto k

You are either trolling me or just don't want to understand.
mSATA is an interface that enables you to directly connect a storage device to compatible MB interface and uses PCIe mini card layout. Depending on the MB you can use the drive as just a cache to speed up your other drives or like a normal drive (install OS on it, etc). The benefit is that you are not using sata port off the storage controller and large power connector, you can make very small storage devices (all I've seen are smaller than typical 2,5" hdd, some are even smaller than 1,8" units, they look just like a ram module only with connector on short side).
The technology used in them and in generic SSD is the same. Re read the previous sentence. It's the same. It's nand flash. 3d xpoint is a new technology that could replace the flash component.
Ok, do you understand me now? If 3d xpoint turns out to be everything they claim you might see mSATA (or more likely M.2) drives with 3d xpoint instead of flash.

Jul 31, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

@ 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.

Aug 1, 2015permalink

micksh6

2Francis Carver
You started to talk about interface (mSATA) when it was totally irrelevant to the article. The article was about new memory technology, not an interface (which doesn't exist for this memory technology yet)

mSATA is a dead end, it was superseded, forget it, and don't spam with soon-to-be-obsolete links from Newegg.

Want to buy the fastest SSD - get Samsung or Intel M.2 drive, or some other PCIe drive, see benchmarks here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/730

Any of these drives will make all mSATA drives look like a crap. 3D XPoint will eventually make all drives mentioned above look like a crap, but it's not going to happen any time soon, as a new interface will be needed to become mainstream. The new interface will surely not be mSATA.

I suggest you to stop it, until you learn one thing or two about computer memory technology.

Aug 1, 2015*permalink

Francis Carver

I agree. "It" is crap.

Aug 1, 2015permalink

Pritzl

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.

Aug 3, 2015*permalink

Francis Carver

Another big difference between these 3D thingies is this: one exists right now, the other one does not.

Aug 3, 2015permalink

Pritzl

I'm still looking for the catch. Otherwise, this could be quite the game-changer.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

It will have firmware that runs the hardware, but it will be subscription only firmware and every few months you'll have to pay to keep the hardware running.

And then every year you'll have to upload all the contents to the "cloud".

Snark.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Pritzl

Woah! Intel's selling the tech to Adobe?!

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Sean Nelson

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.

Aug 3, 2015permalink

Pritzl

All new tech starts out ridiculously expensive; they have to recoup development costs as well. It may still end up being significantly more expensive than current tech but we'll have to wait and see.

Aug 3, 2015permalink

ProfHankD

Well, there goes the memory heirarchy.... ;-)

This should be a no-brainer win for cameras, enabling things like raw 4K video.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Bernard Carns

Hmmm...Wonder if this technology can be used in CFAST cards.....they need something to bring their price down.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

The price will come down, just like it has for every other flash storage device. Well except the Sony owned XQD.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

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

Jul 29, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

FC:

Intel has a big presence in SSDs, what happened there?

Jul 29, 2015permalink

(unknown member)

Next generation includes computational capability with the memory. Prototypes already being tested.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

davepanorama

really? interesting

Jul 29, 2015permalink

MDRCHINA

Please note that a mainland PRC firm has put in a bid to buy Micron. Such a deal should never be allowed to happen.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

jnd

Why not? More competition is always good

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Giklab

Enjoy your built-in spyware lol

Jul 29, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

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

And Micron has an obvious connection to Boise National Labs.

Jul 29, 2015*permalink

MDRCHINA

Micron chips are heavily used in many technologies land based, sea based and air assets deployed by the U.S. Military and our Allies. This deal should never be approved. Please be aware that such an offer has been made by a Chinese company that is serving as a front/proxy for the PRC government.

Aug 2, 2015permalink

zodiacfml

Interesting. I thought this was similar to Samsung's already shipping V-NAND or AMD's HBM RAM. This seems in between both using NAND as storage while the architecture is similar to RAM.

Regardless, I think it is time for camera makers to provide built in memory in cameras. See, 32 GB is the norm for flagship android smartphones these days and that capacity seems fine for cameras starting from $400.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

tongki

You can buy a handycam with built in memory tp do that

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Francis Carver

Yeah, the new digital cameras -- funny, how the makers of almost all of them have by now somehow "forgot" to put any permanent resident memory into them.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Lassoni

Sounds like marketing hype? Is this one of those things that's "too good to be true"? Or is this high-end stuff not accessible for even high-end customers, but for commercial applications only?

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Aaron801

Too good to be true? That just seems like something that could have been said about any sort of high tech innovation before it was brought to the market. We're living in the future, I tell you! More groundbreaking innovations have happened in our lifetime... I'm sure that this is one of "incredible, but certainly possible" tech solutions that it seems we're seeing every day...

Jul 29, 2015permalink

ptox

yeesh

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Pandimonium

Bring it on

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Mister Roboto

Who cares? Just give us a damn cheap 1TB SSD or 2x64GB Memory =D

Jul 29, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

SSD's fail.

And they are harder to wipe data from entirely.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

jnd

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

Jul 29, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

jnd:

Actually no you can’t.

SSDs have an additional 10% of storage space set aside to overcome the fact that the storage cells wear out.

So as a storage cell approaches its read/write life, this point is determined by use count not wear testing, it is taken out of circulation, with any data still on it remaining in place.

That is data that then can’t be wiped from the system--ever.

Note where I said "entirely".

Jul 29, 2015permalink

rkumar

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.

Jul 29, 2015*permalink

HowaboutRAW

rkumar,

Yep, that works.

But as you say "assuming..".

Jul 29, 2015permalink

vbuhay

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

Jul 30, 2015permalink

HowaboutRAW

vbuhay,

And that doesn't work if you want to preserve the drive plus other data on it.

Jul 30, 2015permalink

Jozef M

And ..., how does this non-transistor memory cell work??? That is the question ...

Jul 29, 2015permalink

mosswings

Technical information on the technology is hard to find, but the key to its operation lies in the simple description of the accessing and writing technique. NAND NVRAM works by inserting charge into the gate oxide of a NMOS transistor. This appears to be the same idea without the readout transistor at each memory site. Hit the cell with a high differential voltage, charge is inserted into the storage element (an oxide layer?). Below that voltage, a high impedance read amp at the end of the address/read line can read the voltage on the storage element created by that charge.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

vadims

Everything sounds great -- except for the name.

Jul 29, 2015permalink

Prognathous

"3D XPoint (pronounced cross-point)" - probably from the mind of the same marketing person who came up with Pentax *ist D (pronounced who-the-hell-knows)...

Jul 29, 2015permalink

disraeli demon

I like to think of the "*" as a belching sound

Jul 29, 2015permalink

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Buying Guide: The best cameras for parents

What's the best camera for a parent? The best cameras for shooting kids and family must have fast autofocus, good low-light image quality and great video. In this buying guide we've rounded-up several great cameras for parents, and recommended the best.

Buying Guide: The best cameras for landscapes

What's the best camera for shooting landscapes? High resolution, weather-sealed bodies and wide dynamic range are all important. In this buying guide we've rounded-up several great cameras for shooting landscapes, and recommended the best.

Buying Guide: The best cameras over $2000

What’s the best camera costing over $2000? The best high-end camera costing more than $2000 should have plenty of resolution, exceptional build quality, good 4K video capture and top-notch autofocus for advanced and professional users. In this buying guide we’ve rounded up all the current interchangeable lens cameras costing over $2000 and recommended the best.

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Samsung's ISOCELL Plus promises better color accuracy and low light performance Jun 27, 2018	Gitzo teams up with Sony to launch tripod and L-bracket designed for α-series cameras Jul 17, 2018	Cactus releases firmware to add TTL control for Canon flashes Jul 9, 2018	Skylum's DAM will be included with future version of Luminar, free of charge to current owners Jul 2, 2018


The Lone Photographer by ed rader from My Best Photo of the Week	_ERN9064 by ernesto juarez from Shoot yourself ! (with your camera)	Neighbourhood Watch by Stevie Boy Blue from Zoo trip ~ Cute...

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

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