HP and SanDisk partner to develop Storage Class Memory

In a press release, the two companies said the partnership will center around HP’s Memristor technology and SanDisk’s non-volatile ReRAM memory technology their expertise in respective fields.

On similar grounds, Hewlett-Packard and SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) have made a decision to collaborate on a new breed of memory chips to compete with 3D Xpoint. HP has been working on memristor technology for years, partnering with memory giant Hynix in 2010 and announcing a new class of computing device based around the technology, The Machine, in 2014.

The two companies will also collaborate on data centre SSDs. It is also expected to have a significant cost advantage, and will allow scale-out of double-figure terabytes per server node.

“We are very excited to deepen our relationship with HP and enhance its leadership offerings by using our complete portfolio of enterprise SAS, SATA and PCIe products and leading-edge enterprise system solutions”, said Siva Sivaram, executive vice president of memory technology at SanDisk.

Storage Class Memory technology will focus on addressing the massive streams of data that are generated by social networking, security, mobility, large scale data analytics, cloud services, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Wall Street Journal’s report sheds a few light on why the companies may be entering such fierce competition in the first place: Neither Intel/Micron nor HP/SanDisk plan to license their technology, which means you won’t see it on products from Seagate, Samsung or other storage vendors.

“The onslaught of data facing enterprises will continue to be a challenge for the foreseeable future”. Originally dubbed 3D XPoint, the technology will commercially be known as Intel Optane, and is scheduled to hit the market in 2016-well ahead of HP and SanDisk.

“This new class of non-volatile memory achieves this goal and brings game-changing performance to memory and storage solutions”.