Forget DDR4, Optane SSD is the new in

http://www.pcgamer.com/intel-announces-optane-ssds-for-2016-seven-times-faster-than-flash-ssds/

Intel is developing a new kind of solid state drive called Optane, planned for release next year. Intel says that the memory in the Optane drives can operate up to 1,000 times faster than the NAND flash used in today’s SSDs. According to AnandTech, Optane drives will be available in both PCIe SSD and DIMM form factors.

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Intel gave the first demo of 3D XPoint at the Intel Developer Forum yesterday, pitting the new drive against its high-end P3700 SSD (which has read speeds of up to 2700 MB/s). The new drive delivered over 7 times the IOPS (input/outputs per second) performance.

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This stuff will probably cost like a house when released next year, but it only means huge pricedrops on HDD and normal SSD.
In terms of operating systems, this will make not just win10 option compact /compactos:always on SSD but also file compression of all data stored there as a standard thing.
In terms of gaming, when it comes to PC, it probably won't cover for unoptimized garbage like AC:Unity and Batman:AK, but I bet we'll see loadscreens drop to less than one second in properly coded PC games. Meanwhile currentgen consoles will continue to struggle with their pathetic hardware.

joxer said:

This stuff will probably cost like a house when released next year….

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The wife wants us to buy a new house. I don't want to, I like it where I am, but so far I've been very obedient. Now I can tell her that we can't afford it.

pibbur who finally sees a possible solution to his dilemma.

Definitely looking very sweet... but not until next year plus whatever time it takes for the price to get good. I'll be keeping a PCIe slot open in my next PC, though!

It will take several years to filter through to consumer level. Faster than the SSD, which took 20 years or so from the base technology to mainstream, but 5 years is possible.

At the rate CPUs are advancing, I might last 5 years.

Looking into it, this seems to be quite a big deal. Initially it will be used to make faster SSD-style drives, but the long-term plan is much grander. This is an entirely new type of memory that could erase the line between RAM and disk storage entirely. Essentially, a system would have large amount of this memory that would have the speed of RAM and the persistence of a disk drive. The entire PC architecture would undergo a radical change, and so would programming methods.

Intel plans to begin this first with a new Skylake server platform known as Purley.

Chris Roberts has said that it will mean the end of loading screens, and that open-world games will be able to go beyond anything imagined so far.

Let's hope it catches on and filters down to consumers ASAP, but of course it'll take a while for the shift.

From what I understand this new technology has the big advantage that it's cheaper due to it's density.
So I doubt it will be that expensive.

Here's the exciting bit: Optane SSDs are coming next year to a variety of markets, from the data center to laptops. That presumably includes form factors like M.2 and perhaps 2.5" SATA drives. In other words, the performance of 3D Xpoint memory should be coming to consumer storage in 2016.

We don't yet know how much Optane-based drives will cost or anything of that sort, but given the density advantages Intel is claiming for it, it's possible 3D Xpoint storage could reach parity with the cost of NAND fairly soon.

Source: http://techreport.com/news/28851/coming-in-2016-intel-optane-ssds-based-on-3d-xpoint-memory

Well, actually it can even be seen in their presentation

Source: http://www.lesnumeriques.com/ssd/in...ra-rapides-avec-memoire-3d-xpoint-n44731.html

I'd be very interested to see if it could somehow be delivered as a drop-in replacement for a standard DIMM, as it appears on that slide. I would have thought that a new motherboard architecture would be required, though. Perhaps they've even quietly prepared for it in the new Skylake platform. It might be a good strategy to introduce it in a non-optimal way that doesn't require radical changes, and evolve it over time.

EDIT: Interesting article, here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2973...ory-heads-for-ddr-slots-but-with-a-catch.html

Finally a lot of interesting stuff is happening with memory It is about time!

Ripper said:

Chris Roberts has said that it will mean the end of loading screens, and that open-world games will be able to go beyond anything imagined so far.

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And memory leaks will last forever, too.

If this can really replace system RAM then it will be a pretty huge shift in the desktop world. Server programs are designed to run for months at a time but desktop programs? Yipe. I'm sure there will still have to be SOME way to clear the whole thing out and load up again but it won't be a common thing anymore.

We'll see how it all goes and what will get plugged in where. Should be fun to see!

Zloth said:

And memory leaks will last forever, too.

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Yes, I see what you're thinking. I would guess that in a world where Optane is acting as both RAM and SSD, a portion of it would be assigned to act as temporary memory, disregarded at reboot - like the page file in Windows, or the Swap area in Linux.