Intel and Micron 3D XPoint technology

Intel and Micron jointly announced a new memory class; their 3D XPoint technology.  Since the introduction of NAND technology in 1989, this is the first major new memory technology. During the unveiling, they claimed that this technology is 1,000 times faster, with 1,000 times greater durability and is 10 times denser than the conventional memory. This is indeed a very rare breakthrough in technology.

This memory is said to be faster than a flash storage. Intel and Micron have already begun production of this non-volatile new class 3D XPoint technology which will no doubt bring great competition to NAND. Today, NAND is the most popular non-volatile memory with consumers in the marketplace. These will be rolled out to select consumers possibly towards the end of this year or early next year.

"For decades, the industry has searched for ways to reduce the lag time between the processor and data to allow much faster analysis," said Rob Crooke, general manager and senior vice president of Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "This new class of non-volatile memory achieves this goal and brings game-changing performance to memory and storage solutions."

So how exactly is Intel able to achieve this? Well, this XPoint uses a crosspoint architecture. This is a 3D addition to the moniker which has memory cells stacked up in multiple layers throughout its structure. This has 128 gigabytes per die stored across two memory layers with the initial iteration. It has 128 billion memory cells connected with perpendicular conductors. Each cell will store a single bit of data.

It is also important to note that this technology does not need to use transistors; the heart of NAND chips. This is indeed different. Therefore, each cell of the 3D XPoint can be addressed individually. No wonder Intel claims it has such high speed. It is logical if you think of it. And that’s not all; this new arrival should last hundreds of times longer than NAND before it becomes unreliable. So at least we know it may become unreliable. Perhaps the next breakthrough should consider having something that is completely 100 percent reliable.  

The big question is, is this going to replace the flash memory? Only time will tell the answer to that. Two heads are better than one; literally it took Intel and Micron to come up with this technology. Since this new class of non-volatile memory is able to turn immense amounts of data into valuable information and in real time, the greatest benefactors would be video games creators and scientific researches. Hopefully, this is going to speed up scientific research and possibly enable the creating of more elaborate video games.

So apart from speed, what else is so special about this? The intention of this memory is to bring more data closer to the processor as possible. So there you have it, consider all your memory problems fixed from today henceforth.  


Photo source: Intel, Micron