From the IDF 2015 stage, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich briefly touched on the revolutionary 3D Xpoint technology co-developed by Intel and Micron. The memory/storage combination tech, which promises extraordinary performance leaps over existing NAND technology, will launch in 2016 under the brand "Intel Optane Technology."

We could have guessed on the timeline, but BK (as he is affectionately called) also stated that Xpoint will be coming across all manner of platforms, from the data center all the way down to ultrabooks.

This is a big deal because it means that the paradigm of fast, low-capacity memory placed next to the CPU paired with slow, high-capacity storage connected to the motherboards, may not be long for this world. (BK called this a "bottleneck.") To say that such an implementation would rock the PC industry is an understatement.

We've already written a lengthy announcement about 3D Xpoint, so for a full primer visit our article here, but the bite-sized takeaway of the new tech's capabilities boil down to:

-1000x faster than NAND-1000x the endurance of NAND-10x the density of DRAM

Xpoint -- er, Intel Optane Technology -- will be available in both DIMM and SSD form factors. The DIMMs will be for Xeon system memory, presaging its use as an in-memory solution for applications like big data.

Intel's non-volatile memory GM, Rob Crooke, described in general terms how 3D Xpoint will work, but stopped short of discussing the actual technology behind the bulk material property change. Many analysts have predicted PCM, or phase-change memory, but Intel has flatly denied that. There is also speculation around ReRAM. We still hope to hear more here at IDF.

Onstage Benchmarking

Intel set up an onstage demo showing an early Xpoint SSD in action. Using the IOMeter benchmark, it showed a 7.23x (and sometimes more) performance gain over Intel's SSD DC P3700 at a read queue depth of 1 -- the SSD hit 10,600 IOPS while the early Xpoint SSD prototype delivered 76,600 IOPS.

At a 70/30 read/write mix at a queue depth of 8, the prototype Xpoint SSD posted a 5.09x (and sometimes higher) performance gain over the P3700 (401,400 IOPS versus 78,900 IOPS.)

The Intel SSD DC P3700 is Intel's bleeding edge NVMe PCIe SSD for the data center, and has incredible endurance. In other words, as a comparison point, Intel didn't pick a crippled baseline here.

A QD of 1 might seem an odd metric to highlight, but it is tremendously important in client/desktop-like applications. Today's NAND-based SSDs have long been at a point of diminishing returns in this area.

Application Benefits

Intel sees Xpoint technology as a way to deliver huge benefits in areas such as enhanced rich media, immersive gaming, mass-scale cloud computing, HPC and more, delivering new experiences in areas including big data analytics, personal healthcare and so on.

The company is clearly excited about Xpoint (Intel Optane). And it should be.

Seth Colaner is the News Director at Tom's Hardware. Follow him on Twitter @SethColaner. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.