SNDK Sandisk Corp.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., hoping to distinguish itself amid a mob of cookie-cutter computer makers, is betting on a new approach to memory that it says can bring dramatic speed improvements to companies wrestling with growing troves of data.

The trick is to combine two existing kinds of memory chips in an arrangement known as persistent memory. The Palo Alto, Calif., company isn't the only one exploring the combination, but it predicted that its technical contributions and large market share in servers, where it believes persistent memory will have a positive impact, can translate into an early lead.

"We worked for a long time behind the covers," said Tim Peters, vice president and general manager of the company's server group. "This is accelerating really quickly."

HP Enterprise, which was No. 1 in server sales with 25% of server revenue in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner Inc., discussed the persistent memory effort and other elements of its strategy in a briefing Tuesday.

Other computer makers that have announced plans to use forms of persistent memory include Oracle Corp. and Super Micro Computer Inc. Component makers working in the field include Micron Technology Inc., SanDisk Corp., Netlist Inc. and the Viking Technology unit of Sanmina Corp.

Computer makers for decades have relied on chips called dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, to act like a scratch pad to hold data temporarily that programs use frequently. The technology is very fast, but it is costly and has the disadvantage that information is lost when a system is switched off.

Flash memory is a newer alternative that was first popularized in mobile devices but is quickly arriving in corporate data centers. Flash retains data after the power is switched off, and it is much faster than disk drives but considerably slower than DRAMs. It is used most often in the form of solid-state drives, often installed in servers in slots previously reserved for the disk-based equivalents.

Persistent memory involves placing both kinds of chips on the cards—dubbed DIMMs, for direct in-line memory module—that typically are used to plug DRAMs into servers. The connection used by those cards is much faster than that used for solid-state drives.

The new NVDIMM cards, as they are called, come with batteries that help retain data if power is turned off. When that happens, the information is transferred from the DRAMs to the flash chips.

In one measure of speed, called latency, NVDIMMs operate 81 times faster than solid-state drives, Mr. Peters said. But actual results for customers are expected to be much less dramatic without other technology changes.

To take advantage of NVDIMM cards, some features of servers—including basic startup commands stored in chips known as firmware—have to be updated. Intel Corp. is also adding features to processor chips to help support NVDIMM cards.

The greatest speed advantages, Mr. Peters and other industry executives say, will come if operating systems and application programs can be modified to take advantage of the new kind of memory.

"It's going to take a while for software and for applications to catch up to the hardware," said Ryan Baxter, a director of marketing at Micron, which makes both kinds of memory chips and has developed NVDIMMs.

But there are immediate benefits. Mr. Peters said that in some tests, Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server database program, running on an NVDIMM-equipped server, carried out chores twice to four times as fast as on a server with only flash hard drives.

HP Enterprise on Tuesday revealed plans to offer its first NVDIMM system, an $899 product that comes with eight gigabytes of flash and an equal amount of DRAM. The company plans to sell it separately to customers, as well as introduce new servers that come with the technology already installed.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, predicted the technology would have the most impact on companies that need extreme performance in handling data. By putting fast memory and flash in the same slot, "you can address a lot more data at the same time," he said.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 29, 2016 22:05 ET (02:05 GMT)

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