Micron Technology (MU)

[JLS]

Confused about computer memory?

Maybe this will help, maybe it won't. One thing for sure, there are a lot of market analysts who are confused.

3D XPoint vs NAND

As the first new non-volatile, mass-marketed storage technology since NAND flash, 3D XPoint made a huge splash when it was first announced in 2015 by development partners Intel and Micron. It was touted as being 1,000 times faster than NAND flash with up to 1,000 times the endurance.

In reality, the performance claims were only true on paper; 3D XPoint turned out to be about 10 times faster than NAND, which requires existing data to be erased before new data is written.

The new solid-state memory, however, is likely to find a place in the data center since it is about half the price of DRAM (though still costlier than NAND). That's because it works with conventional memory technologies to boost performance.

With the growth of transactional data, cloud computing, data analytics and next-generation workloads will require higher performance storage.

Enter, 3D XPoint.

"This is an important technology that is going to have big implications for data center usage and to a lesser degree on the PC side," said Joseph Unsworth, Gartner's research vice president for semiconductors and NAND flash. "Whether it's your hyperscale data center, cloud service provider or traditional enterprise storage customers, they're all very interested in the technology."

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