Intel started out as a memory company. More than 40 years ago, it was forced to turn to CPU R&D and production due to competition from Japanese manufacturers. Unexpectedly, it would now return to its roots and work with SoftBank to develop the next-generation memory ZAM. According to announcements from both parties, Intel will join forces with SAIMEMORY, a subsidiary of SoftBank, to promote the commercialization of next-generation memory technology.The latter will be developed based on the next-generation memory basic technology and knowledge verified by Intel's next-generation memory bonding program NGDB.The program is also supported by the AMT Advanced Storage Technology Program at Sandia, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy.
The goal of both parties is to develop a memory prototype called Z-Angle Memory (ZAM for short) in the 2027 fiscal year ending on March 31, 2028.It plans to achieve mass production in fiscal year 2029 (ends on March 31, 2030), which means it will have to wait four years.
The specific indicators of ZAM memory have not yet been announced, but this generation of memory is aimed at the AI and high-performance computing market. It requires large capacity, high bandwidth, not only strong performance but also low power consumption to meet the needs of AI data center training and inference.
Guessing based on existing technology,ZAM memory is supposed to be some kind of low-cost implementation of HBM technology, but with lower power consumption and larger capacity.
Having said that, it is obviously a pity that Intel abandoned Optane memory a few days ago. Its performance is between that of memory and flash memory. However, due to the high cost, Intel and Micron both gave up this technology.
But in the current AI era, Optane's memory + flash memory combination technology has its place. The current ZAM memory may be an evolved version of Optane.
