Intel To Invest Up To $5.5 Billion More Into Non-Volatile Memory

What is Intel up to? The chip giant today announced plans to increase its investment by up to $5.5 Billion USD in its non-volatile memory plant in Dalian, China over the coming years. Intel and Micron introduced the jointly developed 3D NAND and 3D XPoint technologies earlier this year. Intel has been working diligently on a new line of high-endurance and high-performance drives that they hope to bring to market in 2016 with Intel Optane Technology that is based on 3D XPoint non-volatile memory.

At IDF 2015 we were able to witness Rob Crooke, Senior Vice President General Manager, Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, perform the first live public demo of an early Intel Optane SSD using Intel 3D XPoint memory. Using IOMeter he showed that the 3D Xpoint powered SSD with the an advanced system memory controller was able to perform 5.34x faster than an Intel SSD DC P3700 Series SSD. The P3700 Series SSD had 14,500 IOPS and the early 3D XPoint prototype drive had 77,500 IOPS on a 70/30 read/write mixed workload test.

Rob Crooke, senior vice president and GM of the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, released a statement today about the investment and noted that Intel SSD solutions revenue has seen double-digit year-on-year growth every quarter.

In the company’s latest quarterly earnings it was noted that sales of flash memory chips rose 20% and it was a healthy market for them that was expected to grow ‘at a fast pace.’ Intel hopes to cash in on 3D Xpoint as it’s the industry’s first truly new memory category in more than two decades.

We can’t wait to see how Intel’s upcoming ‘Optane’ brand of drives perform once it is ready for consumers!