Slashdot Mirror
Why Micron/Intel's New Cross Point Memory Could Virtually Last Forever
Lucas123 writes: As they announced their new 3D XPoint memory this week, Micron and Intel talked a lot about its performance being 1,000X that of NAND flash, but what they talked less about was how it also has the potential to have 1,000X the endurance of today's most popular non-volatile memories. NAND flash typically can sustain from 3,000 to 10,000 erase-write cycles — more with wear-leveling and ECC. If Micron and Intel's numbers are to be believed, 3D XPoint could exceed one million write cycles. The reason for that endurance involves the material used to create the XPoint architecture, which neither company will disclose. Unlike NAND flash, cross point resistive memory does not use charge trap technology that wears silicon oxide over time or a typical resistive memory filamentary architecture, which creates a statistical variation in how the filaments form each time you program them; that can slow ReRAM's performance and make it harder to scale. Russ Meyer, Micron's director of process integration, said 3D XPoint's architecture doesn't store electrons or use filaments. "The memory element itself is simply moving between two different resistance states," which means there's virtually no wear.
The last thing that was supposed to last virtually forever was those overpriced lightbulbs that were supposed to last for decades. I'm lucky if I get a year out of them. Let's revisit the new memory when it has a track record.
Even at 1000x faster, i am not sure its fast enough either. But would we ever want persistent ram for everything? I mean how could we turn it off and turn it on again to fix anything ;)
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Is this memory based on silicon, or something else, like GaAs or Germanium or Graphene or something else?
Given that they've released close to zero technical details on how it works, but stated that it's nonvolatile, has 1000x the endurance of NAND flash while being 1000x faster, is cheaper than DRAM, and will be available in 128GBit capacities any minute now, my guess is that it's based on magic.
Faster than *THE* FLash? Doubtful. Or did you mean Adobe Flash? That's not much of an achievement.
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Given that they've released close to zero technical details on how it works, but stated that it's nonvolatile, has 1000x the endurance of NAND flash while being 1000x faster, is cheaper than DRAM, and will be available in 128GBit capacities any minute now, my guess is that it's based on magic.
Until they release full specs you cannot assume that it's based on magic. I just hope they didn't base it on myth. But we'll see.