entremet
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Intel and Micron Technology have been working on a new-generation memory technology since about 2012. It's called 3D XPoint (not to be confused with 3D NAND), and it's absurdly fast. A good way to think of it is as a compromise between the speed of DRAM and the capacity of traditional flash storage. Unlike RAM, 3D XPoint is non-volatile (doesn't lose what it's storing when the power is off), and it's about four times denser. It's more expensive per gigabyte than NAND flash — the current technology inside SSDs — but it's faster in nearly every possible way, especially when it comes to latency and reading / writing small bits of data.
Now Intel has started shipping its first product with the new technology: the 375GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X. It's a $1520 PCIe card, working on the same NVMe standard that's popular for traditional SSDs right now.
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/4/20/15375828/intel-optane-3d-xpoint-ssd-reviews