Intel and Micron Unveil 3D XPoint Memory, 1000x Speed and Endurance Over Flash

MojoKid writes: Today at a press conference in San Francisco, Intel and Micron unveiled 3D XPoint (Cross Point) memory technology, a non-volatile memory architecture they claim could change the landscape of consumer electronics and computer architectures for years to come. Intel and Micron say 3D XPoint memory is 1000 times faster than NAND, boasts 1000x the endurance of NAND, and offers 8-10 times the density of conventional memory. 3D XPoint isn't electron based, it's material based. The companies aren't diving into specifics yet surrounding the materials used in 3D XPoint, but the physics are fundamentally different than what we're used to. It's 3D stackable and its cross point connect structure allows for dense packing and individual access at the cell level from the top or bottom of a memory array. Better still, Intel alluded to 3D XPoint not being as cost-prohibitive as you might expect. Intel's Rob Crooke explained, "You could put the cost somewhere between NAND and DRAM." Products with the new memory are expected to arrive in 2016 and the joint venture is in production with wafers now.

Comments

Re:Ohh Ohh

[ArcadeMan]

And I already know how we're going to erase that memory.

Re:Seems Not

[Anonymous Coward]

They can deny all they want - intel has been filing patents on a new type of GST PCM left and right over the last 6 years.

Re:Ram replacement?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 Performance difference based on comparison between 3D XPoint technology and other industry NAND
2 Density difference based on comparison between 3D XPoint technology and other industry DRAM
3 Endurance difference based on comparison between 3D XPoint technology and other industry NAND

They don't actually specify *what* NAND.
So assuming typical marketing weasels, that means it's 1000x the worst TLC they could find anywhere - and that's typically rated at 300 P/E cycles.

But since the XPoint cells are individually addressable bit by bit, the comparison is probably to SLC

Yes, they totally wouldn't write "1000x the endurance of industry-leading IMFT SLC NAND" if that were the case...

in which case the relevant number of P/E cycles for XPoint would be 10E8 and you are off by a factor of more than 33,000.

Would you like a bridge with that?

PalmOS

[DrYak]

However, current operating systems and programming techniques aren't up to this yet. It will take a long time.

PalmOS has been 100% RAM-only from the original Palm Pilot all the way up to Palm Thungsten III (Palm T5 with Flash, and Palm Live with a micro drive where the first to actually have a permanent main storage).
Everything is in-RAM, everything is stored in in-RAM databases. Data saving is immediate, etc.

(Also, although not so extreme:
lots of embed system, usually Linux-based, only have a minimal amount of ROM as sole storage and mainly work using RAM. Though they aren't completely in-RAM oriented and still use the concept of "files" and "storage", and thus make use of ramdisk (usually tmpfs) to hold files.
Still, that also machine which mainly count on RAM storage).

MRAM?

[Taco Cowboy]

This '3D Xpoint memory' sounds very much like MRAM as described by the following article

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semic...

Last year (2014) Samsung reportedly was collaborating with 15 partners in developing similar spintronic MRAM memory technology

http://www.mram-info.com/samsu...

Hynix and Toshiba also partnered to develop their own version of MRAM

http://phys.org/news/2014-04-f...

In less than 5 years we might get to enjoy the fruits of the labor of the thousands of researchers who have been working very hard to make the spintronic dream come true, and I for one, wish to take this chance to thank them for their hard works!