Intel and Micron Technology announced a new memory technology named 3D Xpoint in late July. On similar grounds, Hewlett-Packard and SanDisk have decided to collaborate on a new breed of memory chips to compete with 3D Xpoint.
Similar goals as Intel
HP and SanDisk are the latest to join the growing race of manufacturers to make chips that are the basic building block of computers and other devices. Announcing their partnership on Thursday, the companies said their forthcoming chips will be 1,000 times faster than flash memory, which is commonly used in smartphones and is rapidly moving into corporate data centers. Both said their upcoming chips will also be capable of replacing the widely used chips known as DRAMs at much lower costs.
Many companies are working to acquire a large share of the $78.5 billion digital memory market, and now HP and SanDisk join the list. Some of the goals they described are very similar to the ones laid out by Intel earlier this year, says a report from MarketWatch.
Making transfer affordable and faster
DRAM chips and SRAM are relatively costly technologies that allow computers to hold data for short durations. These help in quicker transfers of data but lose it once the power is turned off. For longer-term storage, people make use of disk drives and flash memory chips, which are slower but cost much less per byte stored.
Designers and chip companies aim to make a single fast, affordable technology that combines the best of both. In the process, they wish to eliminate the time spent in shuffling data between short- and-long-term storage, thus boosting computer performance. HP Executive Vice President and Chief Technology officer Martin Fink said, “We are trying to collapse all of that and try to dramatically simplify the world.”
IBM to compete with Intel in server chips
IBM is also working to compete with Intel. IBM is making efforts to grab a share of Intel’s x86 server chip business. The company has introduced a new family of power systems that run on Linux and selling the products directly to customers over the web.
On Thursday, the LC family of servers was offered for sale, says a report from PC World. They are aimed at organizations using clustered or cloud environments for running Hadoop, Spark and other workloads processing large volumes of data.
