Page 1 of 1

3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-07-28 11:38pm
by Iroscato
I'm pleased that I understood some of these words. Is this as big as I think it is for home computing?

http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-and-micr ... ng-drives/
CNET wrote:Intel and Micron today unveiled their all-new memory technology called 3D XPoint (pronounced "cross-point"). This is a new class of memory that can be used both as system memory as well as nonvolatile storage. In other words, 3D XPoint can be used to replace both a computer's RAM and its solid-state drive (SSD).

The companies claim that 3D XPoint is a major breakthrough in memory process technology, the first new memory category since the introduction of NAND flash in 1989. It's said to be extremely fast and durable, up to a thousand times faster (both in read and write speeds), and it will have higher endurance than existing NAND Flash memory currently being used in SSDs. What's more, it also has as much as 10 times greater density, leading to much more storage capacity in the same physical space, while remaining as energy efficient and affordable as existing NAND flash memory.

Mark Durcan, Micron's CEO, says the new technology is not to be confused with the 3D Flash memory used in Micron's latest SSDs, since 3D XPoint is a completely new class of memory.

According to Intel Vice President Rob Crooke, initially 3D XPoint will use PCI Express (PCIe) as its means of connecting to an existing computer, as PCIe currently has the the fastest bus speed of any peripheral interface. However, since PCIe is still not capable of handling the potential speed of 3D XPoint, in the future new ways will be developed to mount it, which will likely require entirely new motherboard architecture.
3d-xpoint-die.jpg
Enlarge Image
Dies for the 3D XPoint. Intel

Clearly, with its ultrahigh performance, 3D XPoint technology will enhance the PC experience tremendously, especially in gaming, as large amounts of data can be loaded into the memory more quickly. On top of that, any applications that require low-latency storage will also benefit from 3D XPoint.

Intel says 3D XPoint results from the company's years of research and development, overcoming many hurdles including the chance that it would not be successful. 3D XPoint stores data in a totally different manner from the means used by existing NAND. It uses the property change of the memory cell itself, instead of storing the cell in a capacitor in the traditional way.

In terms of technology, 3D Xpoint memory includes the following characteristics:

Cross-point array structure: Perpendicular conductors connect 128 billion densely packed memory cells. Each memory cell stores a single bit of data. This compact structure results in high performance as well as high-density bits.
Stackable: In addition to its tight cross-point array structure, memory cells are stacked in multiple layers. The initial technology stores 128Gb per die across two memory layers. Future generations of this technology may increase the number of memory layers, in addition to traditional lithographic pitch scaling, thus further improving system capacities.
Selector: Memory cells are accessed and written or read by varying the amount of voltage sent to each selector. This eliminates the need for transistors, increasing capacity while reducing cost.
Fast-switching cell: With its small cell size, fast-switching selector, low-latency cross-point array and fast-write algorithm, the cell is able to switch states faster than any existing nonvolatile memory technology.

3D XPoint technology is now in production and will be sampled later this year with select customers. Intel and Micron are developing individual products based on the technology that are forecast to be available sometime next year.

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-07-28 11:51pm
by Mr Bean
1000 times faster than SSD when SSD already run into transfer limits with motherboards not being able to shove enough data down SATA pipes that PCIE slots have to be sacrificed because the SATA buses are already overwhelmed.

The piece mentions the fact it will be PCIE and that a new HD connector is required but if your promise a 1000x better performance I remain skeptical if anything better than 20%-30% gains over a five year period will be demonstrated in hardware.

Make no mistake 3D XPoint might mean we have a nice Moore Law style doubling for storage capacity and speed for a few years but if you could even give me performance x20 you'd already be talking about instantly loading multigig files, instant load video games or ten second OS boots. Take a thirty second load time make it twenty times faster your already at the under four second mark. x1000 performance I'd love to dream but even x10 performance would be the break point of where everything already loads almost instantly.

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-07-29 03:28am
by The Grim Squeaker
Mr Bean wrote:1000 times faster than SSD when SSD already run into transfer limits with motherboards not being able to shove enough data down SATA pipes that PCIE slots have to be sacrificed because the SATA buses are already overwhelmed.

The piece mentions the fact it will be PCIE and that a new HD connector is required but if your promise a 1000x better performance I remain skeptical if anything better than 20%-30% gains over a five year period will be demonstrated in hardware.

Make no mistake 3D XPoint might mean we have a nice Moore Law style doubling for storage capacity and speed for a few years but if you could even give me performance x20 you'd already be talking about instantly loading multigig files, instant load video games or ten second OS boots. Take a thirty second load time make it twenty times faster your already at the under four second mark. x1000 performance I'd love to dream but even x10 performance would be the break point of where everything already loads almost instantly.
They mention X10 density, and that it's a competitor to RAM and SSDs, but I don't see anything regarding density/pricing to suggest that it'd be a competitive replacement for SSDs (vs NAND-FLASH). Then again, it might be?
(There was actually a very nice piece recently regarding replacing RAMs entirely with SSDs for some use cases).

At any rate, I was planning to upgrade my desktop's RAM, (8 is absurdly limiting these days, and 16 on my laptop still limits a lot of my work) but not I feel future-envy :).
I'm sort of amazed at the discussed roll-out speeds. Sweet. Still, let's wait for products first :P

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-07-29 03:36am
by Iroscato
Yeah, I can't imagine this being the industry standard for another decade or so, but it's just cool to see the start of potentially the next generation of memory.

Now, if only we could get round to cracking quantum computing...

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-07-29 03:59am
by Ace Pace
Don't think about this as a replacement for SSDs or RAM. Think of this as another layer. Depending on the size of the storage pool, this can enable instant boot/hibernate, very fast storage for big data with computation requirements or very reliable embedded ROMs.

What's happening in the storage space now (meaning non consumer) is not "this replaces that" but very complex hetrogenous clusters of storage where each piece of storage answers differing needs.

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-07-29 04:04am
by Darmalus
Chimaera wrote:Yeah, I can't imagine this being the industry standard for another decade or so, but it's just cool to see the start of potentially the next generation of memory.

Now, if only we could get round to cracking quantum computing...
From how it was explained to me, quantum computing is only really good for certain specific tasks, like cryptography. For most consumer and business applications quantum would be indistinguishable, or slightly worse, than regular computing because it doesn't have enough time for exponential growth to take over before the process is done.

Disclaimer: Not a computer guy. Paraphrasing something that was dumbed down so I could understand it.

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-08-05 08:41am
by Wild Zontargs
Selector: Memory cells are accessed and written or read by varying the amount of voltage sent to each selector. This eliminates the need for transistors, increasing capacity while reducing cost.
Image

... so this is the modern version of core memory, then. :P

Image

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-08-05 09:22pm
by Starglider
Ace Pace wrote:Don't think about this as a replacement for SSDs or RAM. Think of this as another layer. Depending on the size of the storage pool, this can enable instant boot/hibernate, very fast storage for big data with computation requirements or very reliable embedded ROMs. What's happening in the storage space now (meaning non consumer) is not "this replaces that" but very complex hetrogenous clusters of storage where each piece of storage answers differing needs.
No it is absolutely a replacement for NAND-based SSDs. It is faster, denser and probably not significantly more expensive once volume ramps up. Various forms of phase change have been close to production for a decade or so now but this design is particularly appealing because of;

a) Durability is sufficiently high that no special consideration is needed from the OS or developers about disk life (unlike NAND SSDs where you have to be careful e.g. about using them for swap).
b) On-board processing needed is much much less due to bit-addressability & durability, i.e. no wear levelling, no block aggregation : this means power consumption is much lower, which is a big win on its own for mobile applications.
c) Talking about 'speed' in terms of bandwidth is not very relevant as the bandwidth of nearly all forms of memory can be scaled up to the bus limit with more parallelism (channels); however latency cannot. NAND SSDs have much less latency than HDDs but still quite a lot compared to DRAM. Read and write latency on this type of memory is much lower than NAND flash.

Archival life is not stated but it should be much better than flash, which is inherently limited by charge leakage.

It might well be a replacement for DRAM in the server/desktop sense of 'sticks of DRAM that are plugged into your motherboard'. We are now moving to large pools of DRAM on-package with processors; some earlier chips had on-die DRAM but that is inherently much smaller capacity and more expensive per bit than stacked die technology (currently in AMD GPUs, soon in Intel CPUs as well). With a few gigabytes (soon dozens of gigabytes) of very fast DRAM on-package, higher latency on the secondary / replacable memory is not such a problem and might be worth it for the significant power savings (of non-volatile memory not needing constant active refresh) and instant suspend.

Re: 3D XPoint storage "1000 times faster than SSDs"

Posted: 2015-08-19 10:06pm
by xthetenth
Intel's also announced that they're going to be selling 3D XPoint drives under the Optane brand in 2016. So it's presumably a lot more mature than some of us were thinking.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9541/inte ... t-products