Diablo Technologies Plugs Flash Memory into DIMM Slots

Five Innovations in the Data Storage Landscape

In what may prove to be a major performance boost for applications, Diablo Technologies announced today an implementation of all-Flash memory technology that provides a faster, less expensive alternative to DRAM.

Jerome McFarland, principal product marketer for Diablo Technologies, says the Memory1 Flash technology can provide up to 4TB of memory in contrast to DRAM memory technology that tops out at 384GB. The end result is the ability to run entire databases in-memory at price points that are 70 percent less expensive than DRAM, says McFarland.

Designed to fit into standard DDR4 DIMM slots, McFarland says Memory1 is shipping now to manufacturers of motherboards with the goal of becoming available in servers and other IT infrastructure systems in the fall.

The implications of being able to invoke up to 4TB of Flash memory go well beyond making applications faster. IT organizations can theoretically reduce the amount of IT infrastructure installed in data centers by making use of as much as 4TB persistent storage that is now resident in-memory with no changes to operating systems or applications required, says McFarland. In addition, the amount of energy those data centers consume will be much less, because they are relying more on Flash memory for primary storage rather than traditional storage arrays.

McFarland says Memory1 is based on the same Flash storage technology that Diablo developed to provide OEM partners like Lenovo with all-Flash storage systems. It is a logical extension of that Flash memory technology that the company has spent years developing. While it remains to be seen how widely distributed and adopted Memory1 will become, the one thing that is clear is that overall size of the average data center along with the amount of energy it consumes may soon become substantially less than it is today.