Bitcoin Forum

Intel and Micron unveil 3D Xpoint™ technology and create the first new memory category in more than 25 years.

http://newsroom.intel.com/docs/DOC-6713

http://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/682223748698341377/1024/10/scaletowidth#tl-682223748698341377;1043138249'

I don't really think it will replace ASIC's... ASIC' makers will probably just absorb this tech as much as they can, if it gives an advantage to their chips!

XPoint isn't an asic technology for mining. It's a bulk storage technology, and it's not useful for an asic OR a cpu miner, beyond a memory device to store settings and firmware (a task tangential to mining).

Nooopee. Not many algo make use of memory. Not much else to say.

Stacking memory sectors in 3D has been talked about for a while now.

It's going to be cool for gaming rigs and some very few memory intense applications, however.

As far as I know, xPoint is currently only applicable to non volatile mass storage as an extension of NAND flash.

No, this is a really cool new technology. Unfortunately, it will not help us whatsoever with cryptos, or crypto mining. It might help with the lag some wallets encounter from having 10's of thousands of transactions, but I am not sure of this.

Ahh, but both technology are years away and i doubt 3D stacking ram and ssd are 2 completely different concept that just happened to appear at the same time.

The article also mention effect on DRAM and end with "keep your SSD and RAM for now".

I hope it would make it easier for everyone to run their own high-performance full node. At the very least re-indexing the blockchain after an unexpected system shutdown should no longer take 3 days.

So, we are going to get more stable block explorers ?

I thought this had something to do with RAM, excuse me for my confusion.

if i understood corretly this technology improves storage right? if i'm right, it would be good to use this in conjuction with coins that need storage to be mined, like bustcoin or anything else in the future

I doubt it will replace them but one thing I do hope is that mining becomes affordable for many again at some pint though I can't really see this happening sadly.

Yes, that's well thought. Being a storage tech, it can probably make BURST mining better somehow...

I want one of these  ;D

It is supposed to improve both storage and current memory offerings. Basically 3D XPoint is memory that is fast, inexpensive (we've yet to see what this means) and non-volatile.
I actually think that this should be discussed in the off-topic section. This isn't just another upgrade to the existing things such as DDR3-DDR4. It is fundamentally different from what is available today. Both companies implied on multiple occasions that this will lead to new types of computing experiences.

However, this doesn't mean anything for consumers now (I'm expecting consumer friendly devices in 2017) nor for Bitcoin mining. I do not see how this would benefit ASICs, nor how could this be used to replace them.

In my understanding, this technology wont affect mining directly. But, this would nodes to be much more stable than it is today, because this would bring in much faster and improvised RAM.

I think, it would take some time for this product to hit the market.

I'm aware of this tech since my days at Intel. Not relevant to Bitcoin mining.

This is irrelevant to mining. It's purpose is storage, not RAM. That said, I want this tech in my PC and laptop!

Good coverage here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9470/intel-and-micron-announce-3d-xpoint-nonvolatile-memory-technology-1000x-higher-performance-endurance-than-nand

The debate in the comments whether it's PCMS is even more interesting.

The tech has the potential of changing decades old CPU-memory-storage architecture.
The "RAM" will be persistent and the DRAM will be another cache layer above the persistent "RAM". To realize the full potential of the tech, the CPUs and OSes will need to be changed.

What's wrong with preserving the current CPU design, with onboard SRAM cache above DRAM, and DRAM above this "persistent RAM" made accessible by a high-speed interface such as wide PCIe, where the OS itself uses its paging/memory management mechanisms to move data to and from DRAM?

I need to be careful here.
Public info:
https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012087471A2?cl=en

If anyone is interested in this "technology", this is a little spiel on his thoughts about it.  http://thememoryguy.com/micronintel-3d-xpoint-raises-more-questions-than-answers/

on the other hand

Intel and Micron unveil 3D Xpoint™ technology and create the first new memory category in more than 25 years.[Citation needed]

Over the last 25 years there has been many memory types been developed (eg:CBRAM, SONOS, RRAM, Racetrack memory, NRAM, Millipede memory and FJG)  by not only intel, but basically all major memory companies, eg, Hynix, Sandisk, Corsair, etc..

now I thought this might of been a processor development (some quantum quadrant bit process) that may have just thrown Any calculation process to the dirt, Thank goodness I was wrong! i think the only thing that could throw the asic's for a 6 would be quantum processing.

I'm not sure who did it first, i first heard similar technology coming from AMD. A quick search found some articles such as;
http://wccftech.com/amd-working-hynix-development-highbandwidth-3d-stacked-memory/

And for quantum computing, i suppose if we had a true quantum processor able to emulate conventional computers software (base 8/binary), i believe that could indeed throw a wrench in current encryption of all kind.

But such computers would be qualified strictly as military grade for the long foreseeable future, hopefully it would be done gradually as a sudden jump in technology always cause much chaos.

HBM isn't comparable to 3D Xpoint because it is just not as fundamentally different to what we have today. However, it is much better than GDDR5. To simplify: "High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is a high-performance RAM interface for 3D-stacked DRAM memory from AMD and Hynix. "HBM gen. 1 has already been released in commercial products (AMD Fury), and HBM gen. 2 is coming very soon.

https://i.imgur.com/QpnsAaP.png

The image clearly shows the benefits for GPUs. We are also supposed to see generation 2 products in 2016.

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Update: Some corrections.

I see, i'm not sure how "fundamentally different" it is, it actually sound like it is just an evolutionary technology over AMD's HBM, for memory.
3D Xpoint is a still-in-development-phase technology true, but also happen to be coming right after AMD's HBM.

It seem to me its Intel's project to keep in the race.
The main article itself(link (http://wccftech.com/intel-micron-unveil-3d-xpoint-1000x-faster-nand-flash-current-ssds/)) mention the technology is also basically stacking chips on top of one another. Though i suppose i'll need to wait for a proper comparison of the completed systems to further comment.

I just very much doubt it will stop at Ram for AMD and non volatile storage for Intel.

It wont unless intel sees a good market potential in bitcoin although one might say it might, as Asrock already advertise some of their boards working okok with bitcoins

No, it won't work AT ALL for Bitcoin. It's NOT a mining technology, but rather a storage technology. It could possibly make sense for storing and reading the DAG for Ethereum, however.

Hehh, the high bandwidth high cost version of storage isint going to be useful or efficient. The mining, blockchain and also Eth technology really isint built around the need for Ram-like bandwidth performance. The need for memory is very small and the need for storage vary, but the storage devices again don't make use of ram-like or better performance.

My bad; I'm not 100% familiar with the exact balance of storage vs fast memory vs large memory requirements of Eth yet. As long as DAG fits into normal DRAM, XPoint doesn't really have a useful effect.

Indeed. There is not much in term of specs released for Xpoint, so its hard to say and their technology is interesting for non volatile storage, for faster SSDs. But usually with high speed come a storage reduction and high prices. So in term of cost effectiveness, this won't be it, i suspect.

But if you look at AMD's 3D stacked ram, you quickly see there's not much interest there in the world of crypto, currently.

For gaming i would love that stuff and its very interesting for stuff like Graphic cards but now its just moving the bottleneck to something else. Like CPU response time. Which Mantle API looked to fix. Anyways, veering off topic.

I think the more important is the production process in semi-conductor industry, it is going to be vast different in the coming years

KNC have claimed that they adopted 16nm Finfet 3d and achieved one magnitude of efficiency. So we can expect similar 3D process will all raise the efficiency dramatically in the coming years, but then it will be highly centralized in 1-2 semi-conductor factory 

LUT's in FPGA's are basically small RAM blocks. That's why you can program any logical function into it. So, this technology isn't designed to build SHA ASICS but it should be possible to build one. But I doubt it could have any advantage over regular ASIC.

First, I'm not sure that XPoint works for SRAMs to begin with. Not sure about block RAM elements.

There's not really that much of a benefit to LUTs since they're quite small. A LUT4 (as on older architectures such as spartan3e) contains 16 bits in a LUT, meaning 128 bits per CLB. Even newer architectures have around 64 bits in a LUT6, such as Xilinx 7 series. Making LUTs denser won't help since there are tons of other components such as dedicated gates, single registers, carry chain multiplexers, and so on.

There are some optimizations in which a synchronously used function is implemented in a block RAM. It's more important to make faster routing and CLBs, as well as more CLBs.