3D XPoint™ memory (pronounced 3d cross-point) is a new nonvolatile, memory technology co-developed by Intel and Micron that can deliver, “Up to 4x system memory capacity at significantly lower cost than DRAM”, a hundred times lower latency than today’s best performing NAND, and write cycle durability that is 1000x that of NAND. The 3D XPoint memory technology is bit-addressable, which means it can replace or augment the use of DRAM, NAND, and disk throughout the complete memory and storage hierarchy of today’s computer architectures be they HPC, enterprise, or consumer devices.
While a prototype Intel Optane storage device using 3D XPoint memory technology demonstrated at Supercomputing 2015 a 5x – 7x performance increase over Intel’s current fastest top-of-the-line NAND SSD – a stellar result by itself – the big story includes the fact that Intel is planning to sell even higher performance nonvolatile DIMMs based on 3D XPoint memory technology, which will make dual-socket servers containing 6 TB (terabytes) of main memory possible.
For more information about 3D XPoint, check out the video
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