Dive Brief:

• Intel said the first solid-state drives to use its new 3D Xpoint memory technology — which it claims can operate up to 1,000 times faster than Flash — will ship next year.

• The drives, which will be sold under a brand called Intel Optane, were co-developed with Micron.

• The two companies have said the drive is the first totally new technology for memory and storage devices since NAND flash was developed 25 years ago.

Dive Insight:

According to Intel and Micron, the technology is needed to handle the increasing amounts of data used in things like corporate analytics programs.

“We’re hitting a bottleneck with current storage architecture,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel's CEO, who gave the first public demonstration of 3D Xpoint at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Intel said the Optane solid state drives will allow companies to do real-time analytics on much larger sets of data.