DDR5
The real game changer will be DDR5 when volatile and non-volatile memory become addressable in the same way. As I understand it possibly incorrectly anyway. It's called NVDIMM.
Storage-class memory (SCM), in the shape of Optane, is already here and, with Samsung's Z-SSD, set to become available for use by servers. What does this mean and when will it actually happen? SCM, also known as persistent memory (PMEM) is a faster version on non-volatile memory, built using Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint media or …
Intel talked about this almost 2 years ago. Long time coming. I have seen a couple of HCI vendors talk about it also. I think I saw a Maxta presentation about 6 months ago in which they also talked about 3D-XPoint because of some hook up with Intel. Others can't be far behind.
The ability to have this in sever in a 1U server or even higher density will allow people save a ton on power and cooling.
Here at Infinio, we've seen an uptick in interest in using Optane with our server-side cache, and true SCM won't be far behind. For customers using VMware, it's a no-brainer, and will be a good path to SCM adoption as well. Read our primer on Optane with VMware here: http://bit.ly/2ztWuoa