Bit of a correction folks, Netlist developed the HybriDIMMs using Samsung DRAM and NAND, united using their own proprietary interface. This, and my confusion, is in part to do some nasty and very costly IP litigation behind the scenes which lead to Samsung getting more credit for this than they deserved.
Netlist and Diablo Technologies worked together for a while and then parted ways. Soon after the split Diablo licensed SMART to produce ULLtraDIMMs and a court case was born. Not long afterwards SanDisk grabbed the IP from Diablo and now WD is buying SanDisk, making this an utter nightmare for a smaller company. Samsung invested $23m in Netdisk and offered a source of chips, albeit likely with strings, which has allowed Netdisk to develop HybriDIMMs.
Samsung Netlist has developed HybriDIMMs, replacing some of the DRAM on a memory module with NAND. This allows you to significantly increase the amount of memory available on a DIMM and reduces the price dramatically at the same time. The drawback is that NAND is significantly slower than DRAM; they intend to overcome that with the use of predictive algorithms they have called PreSight to pre-fetch data from the NAND and stage it in DRAM. This will compete with Intel's Optane XPoint DIMMs once they are released and will mean the DRAM market will split into two, the DRAM we are currently used to and these hybrid NAND DIMMs. Check out more details over at The Register.
"Gold plate can give a durable and affordable alloy a 24-carat veneer finish, adding value to cheap metal. DRAM gives Samsung-Netlist Hybrid DIMMs a cache veneer, providing what looks like DRAM to applications but is really persistent NAND underneath, cheaper than DRAM and lots of it."
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Samusung’s
Samusung’s
Shamus-sung?
Shamus-sung?
Wouldn’t this eliminate the
Wouldn’t this eliminate the need for RamDisk?
This is very appealing indeed. I imagine that if this takes off and becomes mainstream, we’ll have the OS load so fast from this, that by the time you depress teh power button and your hand returns to the keyboard your desktopp would already be loaded and apps are literally instant on, way faster than any nvme drive today.
that is if Windows or whatever OS that is used isn’t so bloated that it counters this performance boost inload times, lol.
No you would just set up a
No you would just set up a RamDisk normally and the HybriDIuMM’s algorithms would take over the task of deciding what goes where and these HybriDIuMM products operate mostly transparently to any software. Most probably probably it’s just the OS/Drivers that Know what is going on in the background. And even the OS may not have to know really, as only hardware/firmware and drivers for the HybriDIuMM’s would actually have the need to know about how to manage any DRAM to NVM data movement.
edit: remove superfluous
edit: remove superfluous “probably”.
I really hate that auto word wrap, with words jumping from line to line when editing, but my proofreading sucks!
Conceptually, these hybrid
Conceptually, these hybrid memory modules can act like a standard system with swap space on an SSD. It could be a lot faster than going via PCIe bus though, depending on the connection speed between the controller and the flash. It is always better (except for the cost) to have sufficient DRAM for the working set and not depend on swap. These devices have more use in enterprise where you could put a large, but infrequently written, data “in memory”. It is a cheap option compared to pure DRAM, but we could have very large (and very expensive) memory modules available also. I believe that they have already demonstrated 128 GB DRAM modules using stacked DRAM die. If you have a case where you write infrequently and the added latency of the flash doesn’t kill performance, then it could be a much cheaper solution though.
considering that the first
considering that the first version will only work on linux and not windows it’s clear that this is not intended to be used as normal DRAM. if it was then there would be no need for any OS support at all you would just put it in and start the computer.
looks more like some SSD but instead of being on PCI/SATA it’s directly on the memory bus. That is what you do when you max out the PCIe.
No this will not effectively
No this will not effectively compete with XPoint, because XPoint is not NAND and its much faster than NAND.
Hybrid NAND DIMMs burst buffers arent new either.
Yeah I was going to say, this
Yeah I was going to say, this “Hybrid DIMMs” idea seems more like a gimmicky way to try to use old hardware/tech to do new things… XPoint is a new tech, I don’t see this being a long term competitor against it.
We need to see the actual
We need to see the actual performance but considering it will be significantly less expensive it might well be able to take some of that market share.
Jeremy, exactly right. Right
Jeremy, exactly right. Right now there is zero market share for 3D XPoint. These next 6 months will be exciting.
Fact check Fourty7: Way off
Fact check Fourty7: Way off base. HybriDIMM is NOT a competitor to 3D XPoint. NAND is a competitor to 3D XPoint. Netlist can easily swap NAND out for 3D XPoint but they won’t because the latest NAND technologies from Samsung compete well with 3D XPoint and at much lower cost.