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Actually you should be taking the claims very seriously. This has been an area Micron has been researching for decades. They've had a patent on the memory cell

Actually you should be taking the claims very seriously. This has been an area Micron has been researching for decades. They've had a patent on the memory cell for about 11 years now (US6777705). Phase change memory has for a very long time been one of those just over the horizon technologies, but Micron has perfected it well enough to compete with NAND and partnered with Intel to bring it to market. This isn't something that appeared out of nowhere. Take a look at this presentation: https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/presentation/gatwood_current_emerging_memory_landscape_fms2011_final.pdf https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/presentati... Page 20 starts the section on "3-D Cross-Point Memory". They even have a 64Mb demonstrator on page 23, fabbed sometime before the 2011 Flash Memory Summit. Additional info on 64Mb demonstrator: http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=467247 http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=4672... Additionally, in early 2014, they stopped selling PCM modules, stating that "Micron's previous two generations of PCM process technologies are not available for new designs or technology evaluation, as the company is focused on developing a follow-on process to achieve lower cost per bit, lower power and higher performance." Job description details mentioning PCM, chalcogenides, and "cross point technology": https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/12292797?trk=job_view_similar_jobs https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/12292797?trk=job_view_si... And as far as process, as early as 2013 (2013 fall analyst conference handouts), Micron had PCM on a 45nm process and was listing 2xnm as next node. If they've gotten together with Intel and announced this, they have already reached 2xnm and/or beyond or are certain in their capability to do so. Because of the way flash memory is organized into pages and blocks, latency is very workload specific. Can you point out where anyone claimed it was better than DRAM latency?, the BBC article says "DRAM chips are still faster than 3D Xpoint, but the difference is much smaller than when compared with flash". And power consumption. This is PCM. Power consumption by the array when not being read/written is zero.

russdill 11y ago
Forward looking article from June with tons of analysis http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-micron-the-purple-swan http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-micron-the...
- throw1111 11y ago
  No, apparently it's not PCM. >While they did not specifically state it, it looks to be phase change memory (edit at the Q&A Intel stated this is not Phase Change). Source: http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and-Micron-announce-3D-XPoint-Technology-1000x-Faster-NAND http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and-Micron-...
  - russdill 11y ago
    The response in question has a lot of ah, uh's, and stutters: "Relative to phase change, which has been in the market place before and which micron itself has some experience with in the past again this is a very different architecture in terms of the place it fills in the memory hierarchy because it has these dramatic improvements in speed and volatility and performance" They didn't say that it wasn't PCM, and they didn't say that the technology was different. They said that the architecture was different than the PCM that Micron produced before. Which would be the cross-point organization and the all important selector element. They mention that the cell works my a "property change of the material", or a "bulk material property change". Go look up Micron's recent patents and applications. This is PCM. I do find it very interesting that they are bending over backwards not to call out the memory technology and specifically answering a question directly regarding if it is actually PCM.
  - ncr100 11y ago
    The video presentation mentioned "resistive". I'm not a memory nerd. Does that fact from their disclosure help at all narrow what this type of memory can be best categorized as? https://intel-micron-webcast.intel.com/webcast https://intel-micron-webcast.intel.com/webcast
    - russdill 11y ago
      There is an entire family of memory elements who's resistance is modified in order to store data. RRAM/ReRAM, CBRAM, PCM, MRAM, as well as many others.
      - 11y ago
mmf 11y ago
There are many ways of suggesting that a technology is ready when it's not. I have not seen anything published with 2x nm and a cell size that is anywhere near 4F2 to 8F2 (on a decently large array)... Re the latency caveat I was suggesting BS spotting rules. You're right that this article did not claim the memory was faster than dram. RE power consumption, it's true that it you don't use it an NVM will not consume power, yet that is not what people refer to when talking about power consumption. Can you quote a technology paper that shows lower than dram, or lower than flash for that matters, active power consumption? (The proper unit is W/GBps here)
ris 11y ago
If this is PCM have they "perfected" it to the point that it won't wipe itself if it goes over 100 degrees C?

russdill 11y ago

Forward looking article from June with tons of analysis http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-micron-the-purple-swan http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-micron-the...

throw1111 11y ago
No, apparently it's not PCM. >While they did not specifically state it, it looks to be phase change memory (edit at the Q&A Intel stated this is not Phase Change). Source: http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and-Micron-announce-3D-XPoint-Technology-1000x-Faster-NAND http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and-Micron-...
- russdill 11y ago
  The response in question has a lot of ah, uh's, and stutters: "Relative to phase change, which has been in the market place before and which micron itself has some experience with in the past again this is a very different architecture in terms of the place it fills in the memory hierarchy because it has these dramatic improvements in speed and volatility and performance" They didn't say that it wasn't PCM, and they didn't say that the technology was different. They said that the architecture was different than the PCM that Micron produced before. Which would be the cross-point organization and the all important selector element. They mention that the cell works my a "property change of the material", or a "bulk material property change". Go look up Micron's recent patents and applications. This is PCM. I do find it very interesting that they are bending over backwards not to call out the memory technology and specifically answering a question directly regarding if it is actually PCM.
- ncr100 11y ago
  The video presentation mentioned "resistive". I'm not a memory nerd. Does that fact from their disclosure help at all narrow what this type of memory can be best categorized as? https://intel-micron-webcast.intel.com/webcast https://intel-micron-webcast.intel.com/webcast
  - russdill 11y ago
    There is an entire family of memory elements who's resistance is modified in order to store data. RRAM/ReRAM, CBRAM, PCM, MRAM, as well as many others.
    - 11y ago

mmf 11y ago

There are many ways of suggesting that a technology is ready when it's not. I have not seen anything published with 2x nm and a cell size that is anywhere near 4F2 to 8F2 (on a decently large array)... Re the latency caveat I was suggesting BS spotting rules. You're right that this article did not claim the memory was faster than dram. RE power consumption, it's true that it you don't use it an NVM will not consume power, yet that is not what people refer to when talking about power consumption. Can you quote a technology paper that shows lower than dram, or lower than flash for that matters, active power consumption? (The proper unit is W/GBps here)

ris 11y ago

If this is PCM have they "perfected" it to the point that it won't wipe itself if it goes over 100 degrees C?