🥇Intel to soon release Optane drives with PCIe 4.0, as well as SSDs based on 144-layer flash memory

During Intel Architecture Day 2020, the company spoke about its 3D NAND technology and provided an update on development plans. In September 2019, Intel announced that it would skip the adoption of 128-layer NAND Flash, which was being developed by much of the industry, and focus on going straight to 144-layer. The company has now said that its 144-layer QLC NAND flash memory has already been mastered.

Moreover, before the end of 2020, Intel hopes to launch drives based on 144-layer QLC NAND on the market. Such chips offer 50% higher storage density compared to 96-layer QLC NAND from the same Intel. In other words, such chips will continue the advance of flash memory into the traditional magnetic hard drive market.

Intel is developing not only non-volatile NAND memory - back in 2015, the company introduced a new technology called 3D XPoint. This new storage medium occupies a niche between DRAM and 3D NAND. It can offer very high speeds and is non-volatile. Intel showed a slide that clearly demonstrates the difference in cell architectures of different types of memory.

One DRAM cell is much larger than a 3D XPoint, and the latter is significantly larger than 3D NAND QLC, which can store up to four bits of information. According to Intel, this clearly shows why the amount of RAM will continue to be quite limited and why different types of memory hierarchy are required. Intel believes that as the data space continues to grow into zettabytes, more and more high-density drives of various types will be required.

Intel will soon release Optane drives with PCIe 4.0, as well as SSDs based on 144-layer flash memory

Another big piece of news from the Intel Storage team was about Intel Optane. The company released the first Optane drives in 2017 and has learned a lot since then. Intel is currently working on 2nd generation Optane SSDs, which have been confirmed to use the PCIe 4.0 interface.

Intel has set a goal of more than doubling the performance of the first generation. Intel 1st Gen Optane memory used a 2017-deck design in 2020, and 2nd Gen Optane memory will move to XNUMX-deck in XNUMX. So Intel also doubled Optane's data density, which should lead to higher volume and lower cost per gigabyte.