Intel has outlined a series of new technology milestones and highlighted its ongoing investment and commitment to advance memory and storage in the data-centric computing era.
This includes providing customers with Intel Optane technology and Intel 3D NAND solutions for cloud, artificial intelligence and network edge applications.
“The world is generating data at an accelerating rate, and businesses are increasingly becoming overwhelmed with how to efficiently process it,” says Rob Crooke, Intel senior vice-president and GM of the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group.
“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.”
Intel has discussed plans to operate a new Optane technology development line at its facilities in Rio Rancho, New Mexico; announced the second-generation of Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory, code-named “Barlow Pass,” scheduled for release in 2020 with Intel’s next-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor; and demonstrated its industry-first 144-layer QLC (Quad Level Cell) NAND for data centre SSDs (solid-state drives), also expected in 2020.
Massive amounts of data being generated by machines generally require realtime 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 Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory shines. And, if even bigger data sets are needed, Intel Optane technology connected through storage interfaces fills the gap.
Additionally, hard disk drives increasingly aren’t fast enough for data-centric computing – that’s where the combination of Intel Optane technology plus QLC NAND comes into play.
In summary, Intel Optane is a combination of materials, structure and performance that other current memory and storage technologies cannot match.
Multiple customers are leveraging Intel memory and storage solutions, including Microsoft, which is making significant changes to its client operating system to support the many new capabilities and features that Intel Optane persistent memory delivers, such as fast boot and game loading.