Intel: Data-Centric Technology With Memory and Storage Innovation

Intel Corp. outlined a series of technology milestones and highlighted its investment and commitment to advance memory and storage in the data-centric computing era.

Rob Crooke, SVP and GM, non-volatile memory solutions group, shares Intel’s vision and strategy in memory and storage to global press at the Memory/Storage day on September 26, 2019, in Seoul, South Korea.
(Credit: Intel Corporation)

This includes providing customers with Optane technology and 3D NAND solutions for cloud, AI and network edge applications.

The company in April 2019 introduced Optane memory H10 with solid-state storage. The device combines the responsiveness of Optane technology with the storage capacity of the firm’s QLC 3D NAND technology in an M.2 form factor.

Optane  H10

“The world is generating data at an accelerating rate, and businesses are increasingly becoming overwhelmed with how to efficiently process it. Harvesting value from all this data will be critical in separating the winners from losers. It will require cutting-edge innovation in the memory-and-storage hierarchy, which is what we are driving at Intel.” said Rob Crooke, SVP and GM, non-volatile memory solutions group, Intel.

What the firm announced: among the milestones discussed at the event were company’s plans to operate a Optane technology development line at its facilities in Rio Rancho, New Mexico; the announcement of the second-gen of Optane DC Persistent Memory, code-named ‘Barlow Pass,’ scheduled for release in 2020 with the firm’s next-gen Xeon scalable processor; and demonstration of 144-layer QLC NAND for data center SSDs, which are also expected in 2020.

Why it matters: massive amounts of data being generated by machines generally require real-time analysis to make that data valuable; this need has exposed gaps in the memory storage hierarchy: DRAM isn’t large enough, and SSDs aren’t fast enough; the gap is where Optane DC Persistent Memory shines, and if even bigger data sets are needed, Optane technology connected through storage interfaces fills the gap.

Additionally, HDD drives increasingly aren’t fast enough for data-centric computing – that’s where the combination of Optane technology plus QLC NAND comes into play. In sum, Optane is a combination of materials, structure and performance that other current memory and storage technologies cannot match.

How customers leverage company’s memory and storage: multiple customers are leveraging the firm’s memory and storage solutions, including Microsoft Corp., which is making changes to its client OS to support the new capabilities and features that Intel Optane persistent memory delivers, such as fast boot and game loading.

The company also demonstrated its next-gen Optane technology single-port SSD for key enterprise customers, with product availability expected in 2020.

Click to enlarge

Resources:
Intel Memory/Storage Day in South Korea (Keynote Replay)
Harvesting the Value in Oceans of Data (Rob Crooke Presentation)
Data Center Technology Overview (Kristie Mann Presentation) | Video Replay
Client Memory and Storage (David Lundell Presentation)
New Generations of Storage Excellence are Emerging (Frank Ober Presentation)
Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory Breakout Session (Mohamed Arafa Presentation)
Completing the Memory and Storage Heirarchy (Mohamed Arafa, Frank Hady and Pranav Kalavade Presentation) | Video Replay

Read also:
Intel Optane Memory H10 M.2 With QLC 3D NAND on Single Drive
Three models: 6GB (Optane memory)+256GB (storage), 32GB (Optane)+512GB (storage), and 32GB (Optane)+1TB storage
April 16, 2019 | Press Release