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Plenty of news is coming forth from the SC17 supercomputing conference in Denver this week, including Micron Technology’s announcement Nov. 13 of its new 32GB NVDIMM-N offering twice the capacity of existing NVDIMMs.
Now let us parse that a bit. This is a 32GB solid-state, non-volatile dual inline memory module that carries double the capacity of standard modules now at work in new-gen IT systems.
The new data-processing module is designed to give system designers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) a whole new capability to work with larger data sets in fast, persistent memory.
It’s all about increasingly larger workloads, automation and faster processing. The Micron module is architected to support the increasing performance, energy efficiency and uptime requirements of data analytics and online transaction-processing applications.
Micron pulls no punches here: It claims that compared to server configurations using conventional DRAM (dynamic random access memory), deploying these NVDIMMs can deliver up to a 400 percent increase in data movement performance (up to 2933 megatransfers per second speeds).
NVDIMM has emerged in the last few years as an important persistent-memory technology due to its ability to use the performance levels of DRAM combined with the persistent reliability of NAND flash. It vastly reduces the usual bandwidth gap between memory and storage, Micron said.
As data center storage volumes grow, database queries increasingly need key datasets to be retained in-memory to improve access speeds due to the rising business requirement for higher availability. Many businesses are seeing increased value in placing fast memory near the processor to reduce the need to transfer data from far storage, Micron said.
Persistent memory delivers a balance of latency, bandwidth, capacity and cost by delivering ultra-fast DRAM speeds for critical data. What sets it apart from standard server DRAM is its ability to preserve information in the event of a power loss.
VMware and Dell are collaborating with Micron to increase the performance for virtualized applications. With virtual persistent memory, customers can now run multiple operating systems in a single virtualized environment while reducing overall network traffic, Micron said.
Demonstrations of the new persistent memory solutions using Micron NVDIMMs running on a Dell PowerEdge 14G server are being showcased at SC17 this week at the Micron booth #1963.
You can view a data sheet detailing the new 32GB NVDIMM-N here.