HP and SanDisk partner on a new breed of storage chips, predict a 1000X speed increase over flash memory
Hewlett-Packard, SanDisk Join Forces on New-Breed Memory Chips — Companies predict their forthcoming chips will be 1,000 times faster than flash memory
Context & Ripple Effects
This partnership is HP and SanDisk answering the race that Intel and Micron started two months earlier: the 3D XPoint chip, which claimed the same headline number — 1,000 times flash speed — and was already in production. By pairing a systems maker with one of the largest NAND producers, HP and SanDisk are betting that escaping commodity flash economics requires co-designing the memory and the machines that use it.
The market read it as material: per the relationship data, SanDisk shares closed up 26% on the news. For HP, the move fits a pattern of buying deeper into the storage stack, later extended by HP Enterprise's roughly $1B acquisition of flash vendor Nimble Storage.
First-order effects
- SanDisk gains a designated path beyond NAND — a jointly developed non-flash memory aimed at the same 1,000X-faster-than-flash target Intel and Micron set with XPoint — while committing R&D and manufacturing capacity to an unproven technology.
- HP secures preferential access to next-generation memory for its enterprise hardware, positioning its servers and storage arrays against rivals still sourcing conventional flash.
Second-order effects
- Intel and Micron's production lead forces HP and SanDisk onto a compressed timeline: the first mover will define the software ecosystems and socket standards any challenger must match.
- Other NAND-heavy suppliers face the same margin squeeze that pushed SanDisk to partner, raising the odds of more systems-maker-plus-memory-maker alliances rather than standalone memory roadmaps.
Third-order effects
- If 1,000X-class memories reach volume, the traditional DRAM-versus-storage tiering of computing starts to flatten toward fewer, faster memory layers — making memory choice a system-level design decision rather than a component purchase, the dynamic later echoed by SanDisk's open High Bandwidth Flash specification with SK Hynix (HBF).
- A split looms between vendors who own or co-own memory intellectual property and those who buy it on the open market, with pricing power accruing to the former.
The trend: Memory is shifting from a commodity component to co-designed system infrastructure, as systems makers and NAND producers pair up to chase the post-flash generation Intel and Micron opened.