News & Analysis
Flash will ride DRAM bus in 2014, says Micron
Rick Merritt
2/7/2013 3:10 PM EST
SANTA CLARA, Calif.–Memory chip vendor Micron Technology Inc. plans to place NAND flash along with DRAM on memory modules that ride the DDR4 bus when arrives in about 18 months. The company believes Microsoft Windows will support the so-called Hybrid DIMMs that could pack more than 256 Gbytes of memory.
The move gives flash a new position in the computer memory hierarchy, ahead of today’s solid state drives that ride the PCI Express bus. The Hybrid DIMMs will be more expensive than SSDs but likely offer greater performance with memory access times measured in nano- rather than microseconds.
Both OEMs and end users have been approaching Micron with applications for hybrid DIMMs including in-memory databases and more. Micron (Boise, Idaho) believes the modules will be used as faster SSDs with large DRAM caches, DRAM modules with flash as swap space or as flash block storage assisted by DRAM.
The hybrid DIMMs use a special controller as the main interface to the processor. They also have a separate flash controller.
Support under Windows is a key enabler for hybrid DIMMs. So far Microsoft has not made any public comments on its plans, but over the last six months it has held and asked for multiple meetings with Micron on the technology.
“My read is they are signed up, they keep asking for more meetings,” said Ryan Baxter, a senior manager of business development for Micron who presented at the Linley Data Center Conference here.
Micron is doing its own work enabling hybrid DIMMs under Linux. It expects to roll out that software in time for the DDR4 products.
Samsung is rumored to have expressed interest in the technology as well. Neither Samsung nor Microsoft responded to inquiries at press time.
Separately, Micron and partner Gigatech Products are already sampling so-called non-volatile DIMMs. They use flash and an ultracapacitor to back up DRAM in the event of a power failure. Netlist Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) is said to ship similar products.
Long term, Micron plans to have versions of its Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC), a 3-D memory and logic stack, suitable for integration in partner ASICs and FPGAs. “They will get access to interface technology…the SoC guys are interested,” said Baxter.
The current HMC design uses an interface with 16 serdes each running at 10 Gbit/s, tunable to 15 Gbits/s. The device will have a 300 GByte/s bandwidth in a version coming about 2016.
Click on image to enlarge.
Click through the following pages to see more relevant slides.
Related stories:
The move gives flash a new position in the computer memory hierarchy, ahead of today’s solid state drives that ride the PCI Express bus. The Hybrid DIMMs will be more expensive than SSDs but likely offer greater performance with memory access times measured in nano- rather than microseconds.
Both OEMs and end users have been approaching Micron with applications for hybrid DIMMs including in-memory databases and more. Micron (Boise, Idaho) believes the modules will be used as faster SSDs with large DRAM caches, DRAM modules with flash as swap space or as flash block storage assisted by DRAM.
The hybrid DIMMs use a special controller as the main interface to the processor. They also have a separate flash controller.
Support under Windows is a key enabler for hybrid DIMMs. So far Microsoft has not made any public comments on its plans, but over the last six months it has held and asked for multiple meetings with Micron on the technology.
“My read is they are signed up, they keep asking for more meetings,” said Ryan Baxter, a senior manager of business development for Micron who presented at the Linley Data Center Conference here.
Micron is doing its own work enabling hybrid DIMMs under Linux. It expects to roll out that software in time for the DDR4 products.
Samsung is rumored to have expressed interest in the technology as well. Neither Samsung nor Microsoft responded to inquiries at press time.
Separately, Micron and partner Gigatech Products are already sampling so-called non-volatile DIMMs. They use flash and an ultracapacitor to back up DRAM in the event of a power failure. Netlist Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) is said to ship similar products.
Long term, Micron plans to have versions of its Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC), a 3-D memory and logic stack, suitable for integration in partner ASICs and FPGAs. “They will get access to interface technology…the SoC guys are interested,” said Baxter.
The current HMC design uses an interface with 16 serdes each running at 10 Gbit/s, tunable to 15 Gbits/s. The device will have a 300 GByte/s bandwidth in a version coming about 2016.
Click on image to enlarge.
The slide above shows the concept of a hybrid DIMM. In the following
pages, Micron foils show its ideas for a next-generation version with a
DRAM replacement, the gap these products fill in the memory hierarchy
and the non-volatile DIMMs Micron is sampling today.
Click through the following pages to see more relevant slides.
Related stories:
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rick.merritt
2/7/2013 6:09 PM EST
Will flash hop on DDR4? What impact will that have for SSDs?
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bberg
2/8/2013 1:39 PM EST
Viking Technology's ArxCis-NV has this same basic architecture for DDR3, and it is on the market now.
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resistion
2/7/2013 8:49 PM EST
There are serious errors in the chart on p. 2 like mlc and cell size for stt.
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resistion
2/8/2013 7:18 AM EST
"..post-DRAM world" Did Micron really use that expression?
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rick.merritt
2/12/2013 1:39 AM EST
It's a Micron foil
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resistion
2/12/2013 9:26 AM EST
It's rife with errors, like where did they get 10 nJ per bit for NAND? And STT needs transistor isolation, that's at least 6F^2. MLC is not even an option with low MR ratio.
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resistion
2/7/2013 8:54 PM EST
Mcp seems a commonly proposed solution for companies which make both dram and flash. Is it possible they're not making enough margin selling them separately? Their financials may indicate so.
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eewiz
2/7/2013 11:30 PM EST
Interesting concept. Helps for an Instant boot in PCs I guess.
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greenpattern
2/8/2013 1:53 AM EST
Looks incompatible with Intel CPUs with integrated memory controllers.
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rick.merritt
2/8/2013 12:36 PM EST
Samsung and Microsoft officially responded: No comment
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resistion
2/8/2013 12:46 PM EST
Micron also working with AgigA on NVDIMM
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/20121114132456_Micron_and_AgigA_to_Develop_Non_Volatile_DIMM_Technology.html
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vshadan
2/8/2013 12:54 PM EST
FLASH requires ERASE and WRITE, Just the WRITE is much longer time than DRAM's WRITE. How is that taken care?
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iniewski
2/9/2013 10:30 AM EST
Memory world is getting to be interesting...
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EFosters
2/9/2013 2:55 PM EST
Sounds similar to what Spansion and Virident tried to do a few years back, but with NOR. EcoRam DIMMs.
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resistion
2/10/2013 11:41 AM EST
I've always felt DRAM and NVM (i.e., Flash) had different applications, almost exclusive of each other. Generally, I don't expect what is buffered in DRAM to be stored directly, nor what has been stored to be directly read into a DRAM buffer.
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dnh
2/11/2013 3:17 PM EST
The placing of Flash on the DIMM is an exciting development, with the potential of greatly improving PC performance.
Unfortunately the figures in this article are so bad that it lacks credibility: What is 25M ns? Is that 25ms?
Also the figures appear to be scanned in at a low resolution and are very hard to read, especially in the General/PrintView.
While this is unfortunately typical of EETimes articles, the author of a post is responsible for his/her own postings.
Rick Merritt - please fix your own post, and try to exert your influence to fix this generic problem.
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rick.merritt
2/12/2013 1:37 AM EST
@dnh I used foils provided by Micron at the largest size we can accommodate (did you note you can "click to enlarge" them?)
Can you provide more specifics on what you would like to see improved?
Also, don't hesitate to email me at rick.merritt@ubm.com
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