# New memory technology



## Ozarker (May 10, 2018)

Found this interesting. The story is over a year old.

https://futurism.com/new-memory-storage-tech-is-1000-times-faster-at-processing-information/


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## 9VIII (May 11, 2018)

Intel Optane has been on the market for a few months now, and is pretty much pointless.
I don’t know if it’s just because the way it’s being implemented has been purposefully gimped or if the technology was flawed to begin with, but right now both the price and performance of Intel Optane cards almost exactly matches the theoretical performance of SLC (Single Layer Cell, A.K.A. One bit per cell) Flash memory. So any claims of being “revolutionary” are nothing but absurd marketing.

No one makes SLC Flash right now because there’s no good reason to, though most good memory controllers do implement an SLC cache within TLC chips (Triple Layer Cell, A.K.A. Three bits per cell) to reduce wear due to the usual habits of PC’s accessing a small amount of data very often.

With SLC flash memory cells you get 10x more durability compared to MLC flash memory, exactly the same as Intel’s claims with Optane, thus my scepticism that 3D X-Point was ever worth anything at all.

Also note that more bits per cell makes memory slower to access, Samsung’s MLC chips are already extremely fast, so there should be little doubt that if they would make an SLC chip it would probably also be competitve with the read/write performance of Optane.

(“MLC” “Multi Layer Cell” is normally Two Bits Per Cell, except Samsung calls their TLC “MLC” because “Three” is also 
“Multiple”. It’s probably an intentional obfuscation, but the practical naming for Samsung SSD’s is “Pro” is Two Bits Per Cell, and “Evo” is Three Bits Per Cell. Ironically, as far as I know Samsung is the last company that bothers to make “MLC” “Two Bits Per Cell” flash memory anymore, since 3D NAND has increased the durability of TLC to the point where most companies are confident that consumers won’t wear out TLC memory quickly enough, even though MLC is only 30% more expensive but an order of magnitude more durable (IIRC you get about 1,000 writes per cell with TLC, 10,000 Writes with MLC, and 100,000 writes with SLC)).


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## Chaitanya (May 11, 2018)

9VIII said:


> Intel Optane has been on the market for a few months now, and is pretty much pointless.
> I don’t know if it’s just because the way it’s being implemented has been purposefully gimped or if the technology was flawed to begin with, but right now both the price and performance of Intel Optane cards almost exactly matches the theoretical performance of SLC (Single Layer Cell, A.K.A. One bit per cell) Flash memory. So any claims of being “revolutionary” are nothing but absurd marketing.
> 
> No one makes SLC Flash right now because there’s no good reason to, though most good memory controllers do implement an SLC cache within TLC chips (Triple Layer Cell, A.K.A. Three bits per cell) to reduce wear due to the usual habits of PC’s accessing a small amount of data very often.
> ...


Ironically AMD is currently offering the best experience when using Optane SSDs. Their Threadripper and new Ryzen 2000 series of CPU(when used on X470 chipset) come with a Tiered storage software licensed by AMD which is used in enterprise environment. Sadly Intel's schizophreniac approach to marketing optane for desktops has killed its purpose leaving it out in cold. Watch this video for more info. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbl2dYgjMQ4&t=573s


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## SjacPhoto (May 14, 2018)

Sounds interesting, but I doubt it will have any practical news in the near future.

It is just one of those technology news, that sounds good in theory but is too difficult and costly to implement realistically.


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