Intel, Micron unveil “breakthrough” 3D XPoint Memory Tech – A revolutionary breakthrough in Memory Technology

Realizing the Future: 3D XPoint™August 2015

©2015 Micron Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Products are warranted only to meet Micron’s production data sheet specifications. Information, products, and/or specifications are subject to change without notice. All information is provided on an “AS IS” basis without warranties of any kind. Dates are estimates only. Drawings are not to scale. Micron and the Micron logo are trademarks of Micron Technology, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

1 | ©2015 Micron Technology, Inc. May 1, 2023


The Challenge: Nonvolatile Memory Latency

As CPU technology scales, memory IO creates significant performance bottlenecks Huge latency gap in memory hierarchy between volatile and non-volatile technologies Latency gap widens with the introduction of DDR4

100ns

10ns

10 µs

100 µs

10ms

1ns

HDD

SAS SSD

PCIe SSD

DRAM

CPU Cache

Non-Volatile Memory Volatile Memory


Introducing 3D XPoint™

3D XPoint

1000XFASTERTHAN NAND

1000XENDURANCEOF NAND

10XDENSERTHAN CONVENTIONAL MEMORY


3D XPoint™ Bridges the Memory / Storage GapValue Proposition Applications

Latency

ps

Cost

per

Bit

CPU Cache

PCIe SSD SAS

SSD SATA SSD HDD

ns µs ms s

Application Target

DRAMLow-latency NVM for Memory or Ultra-fast

Storage Tier

NV Write-Cache for RAID Meta-Data Storage Whole System Persistence / Back-up Storage Tiering / Server Cache Application Data Logging Data Deduplication In-memory Database

Vertical MarketsOil & Gas Exploration Medical ResearchBig Data Analytics Financial Transactions


3D XPoint™ Changes the Game

3D XPoint will take in-memory computing to the next level with performance and capacities unreachable with today’s offerings.

In Memory

Taking analytics and transactional

processing to the next level

integrating memory and storage together for

performance never seen before

Mobile

Unleashing and unifying a new wave of mobile

platform architectures with

memory and storage in a single

memory device

Storage

Blazingly fast low-latency storage for

the most demanding applications

requiring high speed real time

computing

Embedded

High speed and endurance that can

drive the most demanding embedded

applications

Client

Revolutionary memory for your

ultimate PC experience

unifying memory and storage for

your next-gen PC


This new class of non-volatile memory is a revolutionary technology that allows for

quick access to enormous data sets and enables entirely new applications.

- Mark Adams, Micron

For decades, the industry has searched for ways to reduce the time between the

processor and data. This new class of non-volatile memory achieves this goal and brings game-changing performance to memory and

storage solutions.

- Rob Crooke, Intel


A Game Changer

“The decade-long partnership between Intel and Micron to build better NAND (or Flash) memory used in solid-state drives has yielded an entirely new form of computer memory. This is a big deal. It’s as if a 10-year effort by Ford

and GM to build a better car also produced a Segway.”

“In the semiconductor industry there are often break-through, game-changing technologies that are unveiled and then

there are the sort of absolute thermonuclear detonations like

Intel and Micron just jointly announced… Yep, mind blown.”

- Dave Altavilla, Forbes - Stacey Higginbotham, Fortune


CPU

The Past: Nonvolatile Memories in Server Architectures

PCH

DRAMDDR

SATA

Lower R/W

Latency

Higher Bandwidth

Higher Endurance

Lower cost

per bit Disk

In the old days of not long ago we had two primary types of memories in computers: DRAM and Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

DRAM was fast and volatile and HDDs were slower, but nonvolatile

Data moves from the HDD to DRAM where it is the fed to the processor

The processor writes the result in DRAM and then it is stored back to disk to remain for future use


The Present: Nonvolatile Memories in Server Architectures

CPU

PCH SATASSD

NAND Flash

NVMeSSD

NAND Flash

DRAM

NVDIMMNAND FlashDRAM

DDRDDR

PCIe

SATA

SATA

Lower R/W

Latency

Higher Bandwidth

Higher Endurance

Lower cost

per bit Disk

System performance increased as the speed of both the interface and the memory accesses improved

NAND Flash considerably improved the nonvolatile response time

SATA and PCIe made further optimization to the storage interface

NVDIMM provides battery- or super capacitor-backed DRAM, operating at DRAM-like speeds and retains data when power is removed


The Future: Nonvolatile Memories in Server Architectures

CPU

PCH SATASSD

NAND Flash

NVMeSSD

NAND Flash

DRAM

NVDIMMNAND FlashDRAM

3D XPoint™

DDRDDR

DDR/PCIe

PCIe

SATA

SATA

Lower R/W

Latency

Higher Bandwidth

Higher Endurance

Lower cost

per bit Disk

3D XPoint technology provides the benefit in the middle

It is considerably faster than NAND Flash

Performance can be realized on PCIe or DDR buses

Lower cost per bit than DRAM while being considerably more dense