The article predicts that SSD prices will fall from 30c/GB to under 5c/GB in 18 months. This seems like a case of citation needed.
Can you cite predictions?
Yes, they're called reasons.
SSD Prices in a Free Fall
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Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#62Could someone explain the 3d storage innovation to me? Wouldn't stacking flash cells like that be susceptible to interference? (Heat/magnetic or electrical noise?)
Not really. The charges and currents in a flash chip don't interfere with each other for the same reasons that they don't in any other chip. There's a minimum distance you have to keep things apart but luckily it gets smaller every process node. Heat would be a problem if it was like a processor but you're generally only reading from or writing to one part of the chip at a time so heat isn't a particular concern compared to a processor or DRAM.
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#63Cheapest 1 TB SSD on Amazon: $350 Cheapest 1 TB HDD on Amazon: $40 Expecting a 10x drop in prices in 1 year is ludicrous. Even if the prices follow a pseudo Moore's law and fall by half every 18 months, you're looking at at least 5 years before they reach parity. And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper; so expect even more time for parity. In other words: ain't happenin' in 2016.
The author commented that they've seen a 50% drop in price over the last 8 months (from 20x HDD to 10x HDD), so it's not outside the realms of probability with the increased yields of 3D NAND.
I doubt the 50% figure.
Just as a test: I looked at the price history for a random 256GB SSD (from Crucial). The highest price in the last year? $115. The current price? $99. Not nearly a 50% drop.
Link: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Crucial-MX100-2-5-Inch-Internal-C...
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#64The article predicts that SSD prices will fall from 30c/GB to under 5c/GB in 18 months. This seems like a case of citation needed.
Can you cite predictions?
You can cite industry improvements in the manufacturing process that companies say will effect the price at a certain point along with scientific developments and in general claims made by actual corporations.
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#65Cheapest 1 TB SSD on Amazon: $350 Cheapest 1 TB HDD on Amazon: $40 Expecting a 10x drop in prices in 1 year is ludicrous. Even if the prices follow a pseudo Moore's law and fall by half every 18 months, you're looking at at least 5 years before they reach parity. And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper; so expect even more time for parity. In other words: ain't happenin' in 2016.
Prices get weird on Amazon. Maybe newegg would yield a better comparison. Also maybe that HDD and that SSD aren't the same level of quality?
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#66Is the hdd demise indeed expected so quickly?
It appears so. "By packing 32 or 64 times the capacity per die, 3D NAND will allow SSDs to increase capacity well beyond hard drive sizes. SanDisk, for example, plans 8 TB drives this year, and 16 TB drives in 2016. At the same time, vendors across the flash industry are able to back off two process node levels and obtain excellent die yields." Goodnight spinning disk; you've served us well.
I wouldn't count them out, just as much as disk drives were supposed to replace tape for how long now?
I bet disks will get even more dense (think 20+ TiB), have better reliability when powered off, and be sold in pallets to large companies mostly.
For the consumer market, disk drives are already pretty much dead.
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author commented that they've seen a 50% drop in price over the last 8 months (from 20x HDD to 10x HDD), so it's not outside the realms of probability with the increased yields of 3D NAND.
I doubt the 50% figure. Just as a test: I looked at the price history for a random 256GB SSD (from Crucial). The highest price in the last year? $115. The current price? $99. Not nearly a 50% drop. Link: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Crucial-MX100-2-5-Inch-Internal-C...
Is it not superseded by this item?
http://camelcamelcamel.com/Crucial-MX200-250GB-Internal-Soli...
The price is about the same, as is the performance, but are they still making the MX100? If not, I think the pricing information for it will not be very informative.
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#68In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline". Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?
I think a lot of people may have confused Google's tape storage systems for Amazon's. I don't think Amazon is using tape, but the big G most definitely is:
https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_300...
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#69Cheapest 1 TB SSD on Amazon: $350 Cheapest 1 TB HDD on Amazon: $40 Expecting a 10x drop in prices in 1 year is ludicrous. Even if the prices follow a pseudo Moore's law and fall by half every 18 months, you're looking at at least 5 years before they reach parity. And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper; so expect even more time for parity. In other words: ain't happenin' in 2016.
Prices get weird on Amazon. Maybe newegg would yield a better comparison. Also maybe that HDD and that SSD aren't the same level of quality?
It's essentially accurate.
For example on Newegg a vanilla 7200 HD from Western Digital, at 1tb, will run you $50. The lowest cost 1tb SSD will run in the mid $300s. A solid 7x difference.
In less than two years we'll see consumer retail 1tb SSDs for $150 to $200. What's actually going to happen, more than a violent price plunge pushing 1tb down to $50, is capacity will soar while prices fall more reasonably than the article indicates. So you'll be buying 5tb SSDs for $300 in three or four years. The difference is the friction the SSD makers will insert into the market, when it comes to falling prices; ie the difference between what they could sell them at, and what they actually will sell them at. The race will be to higher capacities first, then as capacity saturation nears, the bottom will fall out of lower SSD storage tiers on pricing.
Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall
#70So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level?
So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level?
Not to mention the iPad.
The original iPad came out over 5 years ago with 16 GB of storage. Entry level iPads still have 16 GB of storage.
Given that iOS has gotten bigger and retina iPads made a lot of apps bigger, entry level iPad storage has actually regressed considerably.
Pretty confusing, given that flash prices have gone down considerably in 5 years.
I guess you don't bank $200 billion by being generous to your customers.