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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday October 14 2015, @04:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the much-ado-about-nothing-much dept.

HP and SanDisk have announced the development of Storage-Class Memory, a technology with attributes similar to Intel and Micron's 3D XPoint ("crosspoint") memory:

HP and SanDisk are joining forces to combat the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint memory threat, and developing their own Storage-Class Memory (SCM) technology.

SCM is persistent memory that runs at DRAM or near-DRAM speed but is less costly, enabling in-memory computing without any overhead of writing to slower persistent data storage such as flash or disk through a CPU cycle-gobbling IO stack. It requires both hardware and software developments. Micron and Intel's XPoint memory is claimed to be 1,000 times faster than flash with up to 1,000 times flash's endurance. Oddly enough HP and SanDisk say their SCM technology is also "expected to be up to 1,000 times faster than flash storage and offer up to 1,000 times more endurance than flash storage."

[...] The partnership's aim is to create enterprise-class products for Memory-driven Computing and also to build better data centre SSDs. The Storage-Class Memory deal is more long-term: "Our partnership to collaborate on new SCM technology solutions is expected to revolutionise computing in the years ahead."

[...] It's not yet known what the XPoint cell process is, beyond being told it's a bulk change to the material but not a phase-change. Analyst Jim Handy has written an XPoint report which said HP had abandoned its Memristor technology. This SanDisk partnership implies that this point is incorrect.

The HP/SanDisk duo also intend to contribute to HP's Machine concept, "which reinvents the fundamental architecture of computers to enable a quantum leap in performance and efficiency, while lowering costs and improving security."

As we previously reported, Intel and Micron plan to release SSD and DIMM XPoint-based products in 2016, with Intel marketing them under the brand name "Optane".

Is HP's memristor partnership with Hynix obsolete? Will HP Enterprise finally give birth to "The Machine" and change supercomputing? Will Crossbar's ReRAM wither and die, or will the company join the fray and compete to produce the ultimate post-NAND memory?


Original Submission

Related Stories

Crossbar 3D Resistive RAM Heads to Commercialization 3 comments

In a Dec. 15 presentation at the 2014 International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco, Silicon Valley start-up Crossbar said that it has solved a major hurdle towards commercialization of its 3D/vertical resistive random-access memory (RRAM) product.

While 1TnR enables a single transistor to drive over 2,000 memory cells with very low power, it also experiences leakage of a sneak path current that interferes with the performance and reliability of a typical RRAM array. Crossbar's device solves that leakage problem by utilizing a super linear threshold layer. In that layer, a volatile conduction path is formed at the threshold voltage. This device is the industry's first selector capable of suppressing the leakage current at very small dimensions, and it has been successfully demonstrated in a four-megabit test memory chip.

Crossbar has previously made a number of bold claims about their potential NAND flash replacement: that it can fit 1 terabyte in an area the size of a postage stamp, while allowing 20x faster writes than NAND using 5% as much energy. Crossbar also claims 100,000 write cycles compared to NAND's 3,000-10,000. NAND endurance scaling issues have led Samsung, Hynix, SanDisk and Micron to pursue vertical-NAND in order to boost capacity and prolong endurance. Samsung has already commercialized V-NAND with the 850 EVO and 850 Pro SSD lines. Crossbar expects to produce RRAM for wearable devices starting in 2016, with RRAM-based SSDs appearing 18 months later.

In a related development also presented at IEDM, engineers at Stanford University have built a "four-layer prototype high-rise chip" using carbon nanotube transistors (CNTs) and RRAM. The researchers developed a new technique that transfers CNTs from a quartz growth medium to a silicon wafer using an adhesive metal film, "achieving some of the highest density, highest performance CNTs ever made." They fabricated RRAM layers directly atop each CNT logic layer while drilling thousands of interconnections between the layers.

Intel and Micron Announce 3D XPoint, A New Type of Memory and Storage 17 comments

Intel and Micron have announced a new type of non-volatile memory called "3D XPoint", which they say is 1,000 times faster (in terms of latency) than the NAND flash used in solid-state disks, with 1,000 times the endurance. It also has 10 times the density of DRAM. It is a stackable, 20nm, technology, and is expected to be sold next year in a 128 Gb (16 GB) size:

If all goes to plan, the first products to feature 3D XPoint (pronounced cross-point) will go on sale next year. Its price has yet to be announced. Intel is marketing it as the first new class of "mainstream memory" since 1989. Rather than pitch it as a replacement for either flash storage or Ram (random access memory), the company suggests it will be used alongside them to hold certain data "closer" to a processor so that it can be accessed more quickly than before.

[...] 3D XPoint does away with the need to use the transistors at the heart of Nand chips... By contrast, 3D XPoint works by changing the properties of the material that makes up its memory cells to either having a high resistance to electricity to represent a one or a low resistance to represent a zero. The advantage is that each memory cell can be addressed individually, radically speeding things up. An added benefit is that it should last hundreds of times longer than Nand before becoming unreliable.

It is expected to be more expensive than NAND, cheaper than DRAM, and slower than DRAM. If a 16 GB chip is the minimum XPoint offering, it could be used to store an operating system and certain applications for a substantial speedup compared to SSD storage.

This seems likely to beat similar fast and non-volatile "NAND-killers" to market, such as memristors and Crossbar RRAM. Intel and Micron have worked on phase-change memory (PCM) previously, but Intel has denied that XPoint is a PCM, memristor, or spin-transfer torque based technology. The Platform speculates that the next-generation 100+ petaflops supercomputers will utilize XPoint, along with other applications facing memory bottlenecks such as genomics analysis and gaming. The 16 GB chip is a simple 2-layer stack, compared to 32 layers for Samsung's available V-NAND SSDs, so there is enormous potential for capacity growth.

The technology will be sampling later this year to potential customers. Both Micron and Intel will develop their own 3D XPoint products, and will not be licensing the technology.


Original Submission

Intel Announces "Optane"-Brand 3D XPoint SSDs and DIMMs for 2016 15 comments

Were you concerned that Intel and Micron's new and totally-not-phase-change-memory technology would become vaporware? At the Intel Developer Forum 2015, Intel announced that 3D XPoint based products will be available in 2016 under a new brand name: Optane.

The Optane products will be available in 2016, in both standard SSD (PCIe) form factors for everything from Ultrabooks to servers, and in a DIMM form factor for Xeon systems for even greater bandwidth and lower latencies. As expected, Intel will be providing storage controllers optimized for the 3D XPoint memory, though no further details on that subject matter were provided. This announcement is in-line with Intel and Micron's original 3D XPoint announcement last month, which also announced that 3D XPoint would be out in 2016.

Finally, as part of the Optane announcement, Intel also gave the world's first live 3D XPoint demonstration. In a system with an Optane PCIe SSD, Intel ran a quick set of live IOps benchmarks comparing the Optane SSD to their high-end P3700 SSD. The Optane SSD offered better than 5x the IOps of the P3700 SSD, with that lead growing to more than 7x at a queue depth of 1, a client-like workload where massive arrays of NAND like the P3700 traditionally struggle to achieve maximum performance.


Original Submission

Western Digital Acquires SanDisk, MyPassport 256-bit AES Encryption "Useless" 9 comments

Update: Western Digital announced its acquisition of SanDisk on Wednesday for $86.50 per share, or about $19 billion.

Bloomberg reports that hard disk drive maker Western Digital (WD) is considering purchasing SanDisk Corp. for between $80 and $90 a share, or around $17-18 billion.

A merger would give WD access to SanDisk's NAND flash chip foundry deal with Toshiba and make WD an instant competitor in the solid-state drive market. As we reported last week, SanDisk is also partnering with Hewlett-Packard on Storage-Class Memory (SCM), a post-NAND competitor to Intel and Micron's 3D XPoint offering.

After three years of delay, Chinese trade regulator MOFCOM has approved WD's integration with HGST. The two businesses will be required to keep product brands and sales teams separate for two more years, but can begin "combining operations and sharing technology," such as HGST's helium-filled 7-platter hard drives. $400 million in annual operating expenses could be reduced by the integration.

WD can be expected to include helium-filled hard drives in its product lineup imminently. If WD merges with SanDisk, we may also see the inclusion of more large NAND flash caches in the form of hybrid hard drive (HHD/SSHD) products. The Xbox One Elite Bundle ships with a 1 terabyte SSHD, and Seagate recently released a 4 terabyte desktop SSHD.

It's not all good news for Western Digital this week. Security researchers have just disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in WD's "My Passport" and "My Book" self-encrypting hard drives that allow encryption to be bypassed.

Intel Shows Off a 3D XPoint Backup Device 1 comment

Post-NAND memory/storage technologies that are almost as fast as DRAM (in terms of latency) but denser and cheaper will be arriving in the coming years. One such technology is Intel's 3D XPoint (also branded as "Optane"). Intel has demonstrated the performance of an Optane device at its IDF 2016 keynote in Shenzhen, China:

In the test, Intel used two computer systems. The first system utilized two Intel SATA SSDs to transfer a movie from the host machine to a Thunderbolt 3-connected device using another Intel SATA SSD. The transfer performance clearly shows a TLC-based SATA device--most likely the company's new SSD 540 or 5400 Series business-class drive. The second computer transferred the same movie file over Thunderbolt 3, but this time the host and destination media were based on Optane memory technology.

On the surface, the 2 GB/s transfer was impressive. The performance was consistent and didn't take much time. Upon closer inspection, though, this was the worst possible demonstration of Optane technology Intel could have shown. The company's own SSD 750 Series could have produced similar results.

The demonstration the world is waiting on involves random performance; it's the one area Optane changes storage for consumers. We won't see Optane technology in a data backup device for a decade or more, but a small amount of Optane to cache TLC NAND will go a long way in improving the user experience. If Intel doesn't arrange a public demonstration, we will have to wait until the second half of 2017 when we get our own Optane devices to run the tests ourselves.

At IDF 2015 in San Francisco Intel displayed a static image of Optane reading random data at 76,000 IOPS using queue depth 1. That is a full 7x improvement over the company's current NVMe-based consumer SSDs.

In other news, Everspin has begun to ship samples of 256 Mb Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM). Crossbar tried to remind everyone that it still exists. The last time we saw HP/HPE, it had seemingly abandoned "memristors" to work on the generically-named Storage-Class Memory with SanDisk. Intel could become the first to bring post-NAND memory to the consumer market with XPoint devices with capacities of at least 16-32 GB priced at $2-4/GB, enough to store an operating system and some applications.


Original Submission

Crossbar Searching for Funding and Customers for its ReRAM Products to Compete with Intel's Optane 3 comments

Crossbar, which has talked up its version of a post-NAND memory/storage technology for years with little to show for it, now has to compete with the elephant in the room:

Crossbar, developer of Resistive RAM (ReRAM) chips, is setting up an AI consortium to help counter, er, resistance to the technology, speed up its adoption, and hopefully outrun Intel's Optane.

ReRAM is a type of non-volatile memory with DRAM-class access latency. So, flash-style solid-state storage with RAM-ish access. However, it is taking a long time to mature into a practical technology that can be deployed in devices to fill the gap between large-capacity, non-volatile, relatively slow NAND, and high-speed, relatively low capacity, volatile DRAM.

[...] Crossbar claims it can design "super dense 3D cross-point arrays, stackable with the capability to scale below 10nm, paving the way for terabytes on a single die." Beat that, Optane. Check out a white paper from the upstart here (registration needed.)

Crossbar continued to develop its ReRAM, inking a licensing agreement with Microsemi in May last year, involving the use of sub-10nm ReRAM tech in coming Microsemi products.

[...] Crossbar says it's working with Japanese authorities to review opportunities for the 2020 Olympics, including video-based event detection and response capability. We'll see if anything comes of that.

Previously: Crossbar 3D Resistive RAM Heads to Commercialization

Related: SanDisk and HP Announce Potential Competitor to XPoint Memory
Fujitsu to Mass Produce Nantero-Licensed NRAM in 2018
Two Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) Papers
Intel Announces the Optane SSD 900P: Cheaper 3D XPoint for Desktops
Intel Unveils 58 GB and 118 GB Optane SSDs
Rambus and Gigadrive Form Joint Venture to Commercialize Resistive RAM
Micron Buys Out Intel's Stake in 3D XPoint Joint Venture


Original Submission

Western Digital's Low Latency Flash: A Competitor to Intel's Optane (3D XPoint)? 2 comments

Western Digital Develops Low-Latency Flash to Compete with Intel Optane

Western Digital is working on its own low-latency flash memory that will offer a higher performance and endurance when compared to conventional 3D NAND, ultimately designed to compete against Optane storage.

At Storage Field Day this week, Western Digital spoke about its new Low Latency Flash NAND. The technology is meant to fit somewhere between 3D NAND and DRAM, similar to Intel's Optane storage and Samsung's Z-NAND. Similar to those technologies, according to Western Digital, its LLF memory will feature access time "in the microsecond range", using 1 bit-per-cell and 2 bit-per-cell architectures.

[...] Western Digital does not disclose all the details regarding its low-latency flash memory and it is impossible to say whether it has anything to do with Toshiba's XL-Flash low-latency 3D NAND introduced last year as well as other specialized types of flash.

[...] In the more long term, Western Digital is working on ReRAM-based SCM internally, and on memristor-based SCM with HP.

The estimate is that WD's LLF memory will be 1/10th the cost of DRAM, and 3x as expensive as 3D NAND.

This sounds like a rebrand of SLC and MLC NAND.

Related: SanDisk and HP Announce Potential Competitor to XPoint Memory
IBM Demonstrates Phase Change Memory with Multiple Bits Per Cell
Western Digital and Samsung at the Flash Memory Summit
Fujitsu to Mass Produce Nantero-Licensed NRAM in 2018
Rambus and Gigadrive Form Joint Venture to Commercialize Resistive RAM
Samsung Shares Plans for 96-Layer TLC NAND, QLC NAND, and 2nd-Generation "Z-NAND"
Crossbar Searching for Funding and Customers for its ReRAM Products to Compete with Intel's Optane
Samsung Announces Mass Production of Commercial Embedded Magnetic Random Access Memory (eMRAM)


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday October 14 2015, @11:14AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @11:14AM (#249344)

    fuck Intel and their proprietary interface!

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday October 14 2015, @02:17PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @02:17PM (#249406)

    Until they find a replacement that has no rewrite limit it isn't suitable for use in the Machine or as a general RAM replacement. How many times per second does a heavily used variable get written every second? Imagine the area of ram with the call stack and procedure local variables. At 1,000 times the endurance of flash this stuff literally wouldn't last a second in a modern server or PC. Now riding parallel on a SIMM with regular DRAM and a small supercap to copy it out on power loss it would work, but they can already do that with existing flash and the endurance limit isn't a big problem.

    So nice idea, both the HP and Intel stuff, but in twenty years they will be trivia questions like bubble memory or mram.

    • (Score: 2) by schad on Wednesday October 14 2015, @03:05PM

      by schad (2398) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @03:05PM (#249432)

      Not as a general RAM replacement, no, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that. I guess I could see it for some embedded or highly-tuned systems where you can guarantee that those often-used variables live in registers or cache. But not for general purpose machines.

      It would be awfully useful as a cache, though. I'm thinking along the lines of ZFS's L2ARC.

  • (Score: 2) by joshuajon on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:21PM

    by joshuajon (807) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:21PM (#249511)

    According to the Wikipedia article on on memristor technology [wikipedia.org] the HP and Hynix partnership was broken in April: "In April, Hewlett-Packard and SK Hynix terminated their joint program to develop memristor based memory systems..."