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3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

bbc.com

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Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#11

Post by DasIch »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #9

Always the same thing. >1000X faster, 1000X cheaper! Then "No, you can't buy one right now, but you will be able to do it "soon". And, no it won't actually be 1000X faster neither 1000X cheaper because blah blah blah..."

They explicitly mention that they are going to release it next year. Not exactly when next year but it's clear enough of a statement that it will be a public failure, if they don't come out with it.

I think that's sufficient to not put it into the vaporware category.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#14

Post by simpsond »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #9

Always the same thing. >1000X faster, 1000X cheaper! Then "No, you can't buy one right now, but you will be able to do it "soon". And, no it won't actually be 1000X faster neither 1000X cheaper because blah blah blah..."

On the infographic the subtext of "1000x faster" is "up to 100s of times faster than NAND"

Then it mentions 10x more performance with a PCIe/NVMe interface.

Still all good things, but 1000x is probably more marketing than reality.

Source: http://www.intelsalestraining.com/infographics/memory/3DXPoi...

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#15

Post by anotherangrydev »

DasIch wrote: post #11
anotherangrydev wrote: post #9

Always the same thing. >1000X faster, 1000X cheaper! Then "No, you can't buy one right now, but you will be able to do it "soon". And, no it won't actually be 1000X faster neither 1000X cheaper because blah blah blah..."

They explicitly mention that they are going to release it next year. Not exactly when next year but it's clear enough of a statement that it will be a public failure, if they don't come out with it. I think that's sufficient to not put it into the vaporware category.

Over the years I have come to realize that unless I can buy something in the nearest BestBuy/Amazon, it is vapor. And also, until then, I would know how much cheaper and better performant it actually is.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#16

Post by adsr »

I hope someone will give a push behind MRAM which seems like a more interesting option imo.

MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the “universal memory”, able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_random-access...

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#17

Post by aidenn0 »

adsr wrote: post #16

I hope someone will give a push behind MRAM which seems like a more interesting option imo. MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the “universal memory”, able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash. ht…

I'd like to see a source for the "similar density to DRAM" my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint, and scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin-torque transfer.

All that being said, there are people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be.

Also note that you can buy MRAM parts right now, which are replacements for battery-backed SRAM, and are more radiation resistant than SRAM. Densities are fairly low though.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#18

Post by aidenn0 »

DasIch wrote: post #10
higherpurpose wrote: post #5

I assume there are some other disadvantages besides just a high price compared to either DRAM or SSD storage. What are they?

It appears to be slower than DRAM, so it's not going to be a sufficient replacement. I also see no indication of how much storage it actually offers. The range between RAM and SSDs isn't that large and I think it's going to be a huge difference whether they can offer 16GB, 32GB or even 64GB at an affordable price. For a lot of users 16GB might not be worthwhile, 64GB might actually allow some people to not use a SSD…

The article specifically puts it at a price point lower than DRAM but higher than flash. It's a passive array which helps make it cheaper than DRAM, but stores only one bit per cell, while modern NAND stores up to 3 bits per cell.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#19

Post by wtallis »

DasIch wrote: post #10
higherpurpose wrote: post #5

I assume there are some other disadvantages besides just a high price compared to either DRAM or SSD storage. What are they?

It appears to be slower than DRAM, so it's not going to be a sufficient replacement. I also see no indication of how much storage it actually offers. The range between RAM and SSDs isn't that large and I think it's going to be a huge difference whether they can offer 16GB, 32GB or even 64GB at an affordable price. For a lot of users 16GB might not be worthwhile, 64GB might actually allow some people to not use a SSD…

They're promising the first chip to be 128Gb, which is where MLC flash is right now. But their die size looks a lot larger than MLC.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#20

Post by tmd83 »

The biggest thing that just came to my mind is for durable storage. I think I can some problem at work radically differently and much simpler if I had this available in 10s of GB.

How? Because its bit addressable and persistent. Together this makes it much simpler to implement some durable storage . We don't need the log structure good for NAND block erase issue. We don't need to worry about the flush cost compared to HDD (and this ones even faster than NAND). It would be simple to batch write the data to a slower storage if the Xpoint memory fills up.

You can design databases that keep the hot data in memory and merge the result with older disk storage and this would allow a lot of batching for efficient processing and storage. But given its a database/transaction you need durability and that makes thing that much complicated. There are still lots of problem to solve when you cross the limit of a single machine but the single machine limit can get a lot larger for a lot of problems.

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