3D XPoint (pronounced three-D cross point) is a discontinued non-volatile memory (NVM) technology developed jointly by Intel and Micron Technology. It was announced in July 2015 and was available on the open market under the brand name Optane (Intel) from April 2017 to July 2022. Bit storage is based on a change of bulk resistance, in conjunction with a stackable cross-grid data access array, using a technology known as Ovonic Threshold Switch (OTS). Initial prices were less than dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) but more than flash memory.
As a non-volatile memory, 3D XPoint had a number of features that distinguish it from other currently available RAM and NVRAM. Although the first generations of 3D XPoint were not especially large or fast, 3D XPoint was used to create some of the fastest SSDs available as of 2019, with low write latency. As the memory was inherently fast, and byte-addressable, techniques such as read-modify-write and caching used to enhance traditional SSDs are not needed to obtain high performance. In addition, chipsets such as Cascade Lake were designed with inbuilt support for 3D XPoint, which allowed it to be used as a caching or acceleration disk, and it was also fast enough to be used as non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) or persistent memory in a DIMM package.
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