A closer look at HP's new revolutionary memory technology

techradarpro: What kind of performance improvements can companies expect to see (across use cases, applications and improved software support)?

Performance gains will be seen almost immediately on native applications like SQL Server 2012 and Exchange with persistent memory used in block storage access. We've seen 2X faster database transaction logging on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and 63% increase in Exchange using the 8GB NVDIMM-N in block storage access. As Microsoft launch WS2016 and have the native inbox driver included that uses HPE 8GB NVDIMM-N module in byte addressable access, the performance gains will increase once more.

techradarpro: Does that technology have a future outside of enterprise?

HPE is primarily targeting Big Data and Analytic customers with this NVDIMM-N solution to improve storage performance bottlenecks and mine large data sets to reach business decisions faster.

techradarpro: Does the new module dissipates more power (because it crams more components) or consumes less power (in which case, does that impact on performance)? How have HPE engineers tackled power consumption/dissipations issues for PM products?

During active workload operations on the NVDIMM, the extra components associated with the non-volatile portion of the DIMM are in a low power state. The non-volatile components like the NAND Flash stay in this low power state until enabled during a power down event of the server as data moves from DRAM to NAND Flash. Therefore, since the data moving from DRAM to NAND Flash does not occur during active workload operations, this should not have an impact on overall workload performance. We have the same power consumption/dissipations profile as our HPE SmartMemory RDIMMs - where the persistency circuitry and NAND Flash are in low power states.

techradarpro: Does HPE have any plans to license the technology to other vendors?

There are no specific announcements at this time for licensing HPE Persistent Memory products.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.