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Intel Promises 'Optane' SSDs Based On Technology Faster Than Flash In 2016
holy_calamity writes: Intel today announced that it will introduce SSDs based on a new non-volatile memory that is significantly faster than flash in 2016. A prototype was shown operating at around seven times as fast as a high-end SSD available today. Intel's new 3D Xpoint memory technology was developed in collaboration with Micron and is said to be capable of operating as much as 1000 times faster than flash. Scant details have been released, but the technology has similarities with the RRAM and memristor technologies being persued by other companies.
You can't call them "flash drives" if it isn't flash memory, can you? We need a name that conveys the increased speed, and that maybe plays up the 3D aspect, where capacity can grow by expansion along the Z axis as well as the traditional X and Y dimensions.
I know! They can call them "Zip drives"!
I read the TFA for a change and it said that the drives would be available in lightweight laptops. There was a Slashdot article about this technology when it was announced and there was speculation about whether it was a cache technology or a direct storage medium.
TFA said it would be for enterprise storage *and* laptops, so its likely means it's a "drive" and that it will likely be more or less affordable or it wouldn't go into laptops. The only question is how fast, TFA said the demo was only 7x current flash but maybe faster at introduction in 2016.
I think the original story said it was far more durable than flash now, and if TFA article is to be believed about use in enterprise storage it could really shake things up. Vendors now make a big deal out of fancy tiering schemes, charging two arms and a leg for a few SSDs and fancy software to keep quiet data on their only slightly cheaper nearline disks. What's the point if you can do 100% of this with drives faster than flash but cheap enough to go into laptops?
If you look at Newegg and Amazon reviews, you'll find that perhaps the most reliable drives are 1TB in capacity and somewhat behind the cutting edge. Sure, you can get 6TB drives, but they're ticking timebombs. They have unacceptably high failure rates. As such, we're already on course for flash SSDs to overtake mechanical drives, because a 1TB SSD is approaching the price of an enterprise mechanical drive. The instant an even cheaper alternative comes out, mechanical drives are dead. They won't be cheaper by the megabyte anymore, and you can't trust them. Manufacturers COULD try to make them more reliable, but that would require more testing of individual units before shipping, which would increases costs even further. Indeed, the only reason mechanical drives are as cheap as they are is because MANUFACTURERS DO NOT TEST THEIR DRIVES. They are specifically designed so that they don't NEED to be tested. They have all kinds of failsafe mechanisms, vibration management, power management, temperature management, sector remapping, and they're over-engineered. A drive can be half broken, but you won't know because it's likely to keep working just fine. The ones that are DOA or die right away are really the worst of the lot and far more broken than you realize. The designers put all their efforts in at design time so as to cut manufacturing costs. But the end is very very near.