Solid State Drive Prices Falling Fast

Written by Adam Gosling

Friday, 16 March 2007

While we might not see mainstream uptake of Flash memory-based storage devices for mainstream laptop computers in 2007, there's little doubt that some users seeking significant performance enhancements to run enterprise applications may jump quite quickly. The real watershed switch to solid state disk technology is likely to take another year or two, or five depending on just how fast the Flash memory makers can drive down the prohibitive cost of the devices. Already we are seeing significant price falls. For example, Super Talent Technology, which announced SSD drives up to 128GB in the shadow of this weeks announcement from SanDisk claims the price of its Flash-based drives has dropped by half in the past 12 months. Other companies are reporting even more precipitous falls than that. The NAND memory used in thee drives could become affordable relatively quickly if Toshiba is correct in its prediction that Flash RAM chips could be 70 per cent less expensive by the end of March than they were a year ago. Or as NAND manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor suggest in the same report, prices could fall by one-third in the current quarter alone! One of the real opportunities may not be to have a flash only notebook and use the capabilities in Microsoft's new Vista operating system to support two different drive types in the one device, or alternatively to have one drive, but a hybrid spinning disk/Flash drive in the single 2.5 inch housing, such as the Samsung hybrid drive. For its part, the Super Talent announcement this week was notable for offering such a complete range of Solid State Disk (SSD) Serial ATA (SATA) drives. Super Talent is offering industry standard 1.8-inch, 2.5-inch, and 3.5-inch form factors in capacities ranging from 16GB to 128GB. "This new generation of SSD drives delivers all the benefits of Flash based storage - rugged reliability, low power consumption and fast access speed. But we've engineered these drives to offer twice the data throughput at half the cost per gigabyte compared to the first SSD drives we introduced a year-ago." stated Joe James, Marketing Director at Super Talent Technology. When all is said and done, you have to accept that the design and manufacture of these devices from Flash Memory is not rocket science and if you look at the way pricing forUSB Flash drives - a fundamentally similar offering - has fallen since their introduction, a viable pricing model for high performance solid state storage in off the shelf notebooks could easily be less than a year away. Apple is one notebook manufacturer who has already been linked to plans to sell a Flash storage based laptop earlier this week when an analysts at American Technology Research said the company hopes hopes to introduce an SSD-based subnotebook in the second half of 2007. Shaw Wu, was among the first analysts to forecast Apple's introduction of the iPhone, so does have some form despite Apple being one of the most speculated about companeis on the planet. Wu notes as flash memory prices decline that the time is right for the flash makers to make a move. "Apple, from what we understand, is pretty much ready. The ball is in the flash vendors' court," he said. Related news items Nokia Buys Map Company For US$8 Billion -02/10/2007 Ringtone Service Wins Creativity Award -26/09/2007 3 Trials Alternative Mobile TV Technology -15/08/2007 Solid State Drives Will Find A Home: IDC -12/08/2007 Consumer Electronics Takes Interest In 802.11n -12/08/2007 Newer news items Spinning Disks Aren't Standing Still -14/05/2007 Lexar Express SSD Has Backup Intent -01/05/2007 Samsung's Announces 16Gb Flash -30/04/2007 Dell Drives Into Solid State Storage -29/04/2007 SSD Drive LifeBook Only For High Rollers -20/03/2007 Older news items SanDisk Adds To SSD Trend -15/03/2007 Intel Targets Solid State Drives At Servers -13/03/2007 Hybrid Drive Reduces Crash Risk -07/03/2007 Solid State SanDisk Disc -04/01/2007 WD Portable Drive With Panache -20/11/2006 Tag This Now: