Analyzing Intel-Micron 3D XPoint: The Next Generation Non-Volatile Memory
by Kristian Vättö, Ian Cutress & Ryan Smith on July 31, 2015 11:00 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
3D XPoint has a lot to chew on. There hasn't been an announcement this big in the memory industry since the invention of NAND in 1989 and while DRAM and NAND have improved and scaled a lot over the decades, 3D XPoint is really a new class of memory. It's fast, durable, scalable and non-volatile, whereas DRAM and NAND each only meet two of these criteria. It fills the niche between DRAM and NAND by taking the best characteristics of both technologies and creating a memory unlike anything we have seen before.
The significance of the announcement isn't just the new memory technology, but that it's actually in production with volume shipments scheduled for next year. Intel and Micron have succeeded in bringing a concept from a lab to an actual fab, which is by far the most difficult part in any new semiconductor technology. Something that works well in a lab may not be mass producible at all, but Intel and Micron made the necessary investments to develop new material compounds and surrounding technologies to turn 3D XPoint into a real product. It will be interesting to see how the other DRAM and NAND vendors respond because the memory industry is one where you don't want your rivals to have something you don't for an extended period of time.
However, it's clear that 3D XPoint isn't a true DRAM or NAND successor and Intel and Micron aren't trying to position it as such. DRAM will still have its market in high performance applications that require the latency and endurance that 3D XPoint can't offer. Our early cost analysis also suggests that 3D XPoint isn't as dense as planar NAND, let alone 3D NAND, but by having the ability to scale both vertically and horizontally 3D XPoint may have the potential to replace 3D NAND in the long run.
Looking further into the future, 3D XPoint isn't the only technology Intel and Micron are cooking. If the two stay on schedule, we should be hearing about their other new memory technology in roughly two years. As 3D XPoint seems to be more suitable as a 3D NAND replacement, the second new technology might be one that is capable of taking DRAM's place in the long run.
All in all, it's impossible to think of all the possible applications that 3D XPoint will have in the future because it's a technology that hasn't existed before. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that 3D XPoint has the potential to change modern computer architectures and the way we see computing, but that transition won't happen overnight and will likely require competing technologies from other vendors to fulfill the demand. What is clear, though, is that Intel and Micron are leading us to a new era of memory and computing next year.
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Ian Cutress - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
Most likely they're wanting to protect their investment and not let the cat out of the bag for others to copy. Keeping IP close to the chest and industry secrets is part of the game is important, especially if there's 10 years of funding behind it. That's why we don't get any insights at all into things like Qualcomm's Adreno graphics and such - to them they want us to consider it a black box and that's all they're willing to speak on the issue.There may be something legal too. Can't discount that for sure.
jjj - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
Don't confuse the public with the competition. Why they hide from the public, ask their IR and marketing.Their competitors know a lot more and a lot sooner than you imagine. When corporations claim"competitive reasons" it's a flat out lie 99.99% of the time. Here once they start sampling there is nothing to hide anymore and they'll do that soon enough although there have been rumors about the tech and some might be working on controllers for the thing already so the relevant competitors might have all the info they need- Samsung has been involved in plenty of scandals over the year, Toshiba is in the middle of one right now so don't imagine for a minute that big corporations have any kind of ethics and they won't do what they need to do to obtain info.Micron has it's summer analyst day on August 14 and they will disclose more then, remains to be seen how much.
Tunnah - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
This post literally gave me a headache.Damn I wish I was smarter. Although from what I could...grasp (and I use that term so incredibly loosely) it looks awesome.
One question I had though, if it's faster by a large margin than NAND, and more reliable, does that mean the introductory pricing will push enterprise SSD costs down, or simply be artificially inflated as to not damage the profit margins from that sector ?
Ian Cutress - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
It's difficult to say at this point as it depends on what product segment will exploit XPoint the most. If we're looking at an intermediary for database applications, it might need a change on the hardware level and certainly at a software level, and be sold different to storage. If it's acting as an SSD replacement, you'll most likely see it being sold at a premium against 3D NAND technologies and the market will adjust accordingly. There's also the aspect of competition too, and if anyone else will have something in this space soon.Kristian Vättö - Monday, August 3, 2015 - link
Just to add to Ian's comment, there was also a private "Meet the Architect" Q&A after the webinar with Micron's VP of R&D and one of Intel's Senior Fellows and the two went into great detail of how PCM never ended up being viable to replace DRAM due to scaling issues.witeken - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
How about PCMS? This very informed article a number of weeks ago predicted it would be PCMS. He makes a very strong case, and that was before the announcement.http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-...
name99 - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
Obsessing about this is idiotic.Intel/Micron is avoiding certain language because that language has an unfortunate past (cf Windows Vista becomes Windows 7 --- "is it Windows Vista? No no no, Completely new OS"...)
Whether it's phase change or not (or whether changing the material from one state to another counts as a phase change) is utterly irrelevant to anyone except the manufacturer. It's like if Intel announced 3D-NAND and the question everyone felt worth asking was what color the masks are.
The questions that DO matter are the user-facing questions --- performance (read and write), power, cost, reliability, form factor.
Ian Cutress - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
As an end-user, yes it doesn't ultimately matter what the underlying technology is.As an analyst interested in the science behind the industry, or if you were a financial investment agent looking into the market to see which technologies are keeping which companies in growth figures with potential market share adjustments, it's an absolute must-know.
User facing questions are about how the product is used. Business facing questions are about how the product fits in, and the technology behind it. Research related questions are about exploiting fundamental laws of physics in different ways, regardless of the name. All of these questions matter, even if you're not involved in the latter two segments.
Refuge - Monday, August 3, 2015 - link
This is Anandtech right? I didn't click on the wrong link?I thought this site existed solely because we all obsess over the latest tech, and appreciate knowing how the nitty gritty's all work together. ;)
KateH - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
This seems like it would compliment HBM well. If an APU was made with "only" 4-8GB of on-package memory, but could use swap space on a XPoint partition, the performance hit from paging could be pretty minor.