Intel to Launch 3D XPoint DIMMs in 2H 2018

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12041/intel-to-launch-3d-xpoint-dimms-in-2h-2018

by p1esk • 9 years ago

79 41 9 years ago

Zekio• 9 years ago

sad part is you gotta combine it with an EPYC cpu otherwise people can potentially grab your DIMMs and read the data

wmf4• 9 years ago

Epyc has SEV encrypted memory and Skylake has SGX encrypted memory (although I wouldn't expect SGX to actually work with XPoint).

eloff• 9 years ago

Whether they have an $8B market or not will very much depend on the performance and price. I really hope they can make it work though. The first generations of a new technology are typically not much to get excited about, but as it gets better over time this could be the first major shakeup to the memory/storage hierarchy since the SSD - with potentially bigger ramifications because it's byte-addressable.

ChuckMcM2• 9 years ago

That will change things. I really would like a nice hibernate function that didn't require saving anything to disk.

Moral_• 9 years ago

Why? Hibernating to an SSD is pretty fast already.

dboreham• 9 years ago

Hmm...still several seconds in my neighborhood.

If it were 0.1 second I think life would be quite a bit more pleasant.

nine_k• 9 years ago

Imagine zero-draw "hibernation mode" taking a few milliseconds to enter, and "waking up" in a few milliseconds, too. Apply to mobile devices.

ChuckMcM2• 9 years ago

This stuff promises sub millesecond hibernation. Things like hibernating between sentences kind of hibernation. Doing that could conceivably extend the effective 'use' time of a laptop with a 99Wh battery to a week or more between charges.

mattthebaker2• 9 years ago

We're talking CPU idle and hibernate being nearly essentially the same. Instant.

shahar2k2• 9 years ago

so, as someone naively excited about memristors I've noticed the similarity between Xpoint and memristive memory... am I totally off here though?

wmf4• 9 years ago

XPoint is a form of chalcogenide resistive memory while HP memristors are titanium dioxide resistive memory.

shahar2k2• 9 years ago

is this a measure to avoid patent conflicts? (or is there an appreciable difference in inner workings)

continuations• 9 years ago

Do these really have RAM-like performance or is Intel calling them DIMMs as a marketing ploy?

I still remember when Optane was first announced Intel hyped it as a replacement for RAM. When it was finally available it turned out to be about 1,000x slower than RAM and barely faster than other SSD. So much for RAM replacement...

fgonzag• 9 years ago

Barely faster than NVMe SSDs when fully saturated. At low queue depths and in mixed workloads (especially when overwriting data) Optane absolutely destroys the competition. This is a database dream drive. Only problem is the low capacities right now.

wtallis3• 9 years ago

Barely faster than NVMe SSDs when fully saturated.

The Optane products released thus far are all literally NVMe SSDs, which is why their best-case latency isn't much better than that of flash-based NVMe SSDs. They still have PCIe and NVMe protocol overhead to deal with, which the 3D XPoint DIMMs won't have.

The unimpressive peak throughput of the current Optane SSDs is largely a consequence of the Optane SSD controller having a fairly low channel count. A single 3D XPoint DIMM will probably have substantially higher throughput than a current Optane SSD.

AndrewDavis• 9 years ago

It's much better in latency too[1].

I also wonder if the current products are bottlenecked by the controller and whether DIMMs will see vastly superior performance. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

[1]https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Intel-Optane-Memory-32...

ksec• 9 years ago

Intel promised 512GB per DIMMs. But looking at those Optane Drives results I think its much lower bandwith may be a problem.

Just waiting to see product review, it has the potential to bring In-"Memory" computing to next level.

flyinghamster• 9 years ago

Optane also looks like it would make a nice ZFS log device.

bryanlarsen2• 9 years ago

I expect them to have RAM like performance because they'll have a RAM mirror similar to existing NVDIMM-N's.

wmf4• 9 years ago

That's not how they work. The capacity is much larger than any DRAM DIMM.

imtringued• 9 years ago

NAND already has reached it's peak. I don't see why people are so disappointed that the first generation of a rushed product is competitive with todays high end NAND SSDs.

0xcde4c3db• 9 years ago

There was a time that Intel was telling us that this was so much better than NAND that it represented an entirely new tier in the storage hierarchy, sitting between DRAM and SSDs.

Tepix2• 9 years ago

"DIMM" stands for dual in-line memory module, it is not about speed. It means that there are pins on both sides of the module with different signals (as opposed to SIMM).

olympus• 9 years ago

Technically you are correct (the best kind of correct). But on a standard PC motherboard/configuration, DIMM slots are used exclusively for RAM which is much faster than ROM/storage. 3dxpoint was specifically marketed as being almost like a RAM/ROM hybrid in application. You could have 32GB RAM for regular computing plus 512GB of optane in the remaining DIMM slots and it would be like having swap space with very little speed penalty.

So GP is right to be concerned about speed for these form factors. If it's not faster than an NVMe drive them it's not worth the price.

userbinator• 9 years ago

This reminds me of core memory, which was intrinsically nonvolatile and likely has more endurance per bit than any flash-based storage today. I wonder how it handles wear leveling, since being in a DIMM format means the CPU(s) can write to it far more aggressively than an SSD.

ajmurmann2• 9 years ago

It doesn't require wear leveling like SSDs do. It's like RAM in that regard.

I strongly recommend this talk from StrangeLoop on persisted memory: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VE1hCUMLHX4

pilif• 9 years ago

It doesn't require wear leveling like SSDs do. It's like RAM in that regard

Are you sure? The article lists a fixed durability of 30 drive writes over 5 years. If it wasn’t wear leveling, those 30 writes would be reached very quickly on specific locations.

pitaj• 9 years ago

One thing I wondering is what Micron is planning on doing with 3D Xpoint. It was a joint venture between the two firms, after all, but it seems like Intel is the only one doing anything with it so far. I haven't even heard anything.

wtallis3• 9 years ago

Micron has shown a few prototypes, like an SSD using a controller from CNEX Labs, who are best known for their open-channel SSD work.

I didn't really expect that Intel would end up this far ahead of Micron in bringing 3D XPoint to market, but it has been clear for quite a while that Intel has the dominant role in their relationship.

mattthebaker2• 9 years ago

Intel NVM Systems and Micron have been partnered since the early days of both of their starts in NAND. Investment in R&D and fabs are shared between the two companies. Intel is largely pushing 3DXP down the pipe from the CPU groups as a performance advantage. If/when it really takes off, they will need added support/investment from Micron to increase supply, reduce risk, etc.

hguhghuff• 9 years ago

With free added back door!

Tepix2• 9 years ago

This could be an amazing technology for high performance mobile devices, especially laptops.

For this first release, "3D XPoint DIMMs will require server platform support because they are unlikely to operate as standard DDR4 DIMMs. The JEDEC NVDIMM-P standard for persistent memory DIMMs has not been finalized and is expected next year".

Intel to Launch 3D XPoint DIMMs in 2H 2018

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