Flash Memory Won't Get Cheaper Any Time Soon 166
jfruh writes "Some melancholy news from the Hot Chips symposium last week: NAND memory, which powers the solid-state drives that have revolutionized storage, has broken the $1 per gigabyte barrier and isn't getting any cheaper. 'They will always be ten times the cost of a hard drive,' says analyst Jim Handy. There are newer technologies in development, but they won't be able to beat NAND on price for years."
Re:Crossbar (Score:5, Interesting)
HP's memristor/ReRAM hasn't been mentioned in a while. That technology looks promising, and like the parent states, Crossbar has 1TB chips in testing. Does that mean there will be a USB flash drive with this technology? I'd not hold my breath, especially remembering how holographic storage was always just around the corner, from back in 1992 with a company called Tamarak to a few years ago with InPhase (well, their stuff is now owned by the state of Colorado, so who knows what state their IP is in...)
However, SSD isn't the be-all and end-all in storage. One can always make an array using battery backed up DRAM if needed and had the cash.
BARRIER!? (Score:5, Interesting)
has broken the $1 per gigabyte barrier
It isn't a barrier. $1 is a COMPLETELY arbitrary value. Examples of real barriers are the sound barrier or the clock speed vs. power barrier (region) of silicon. A monetary barrier between low and middle class would be being able to pay for a new car with cash.
There has to be a solid justification to call it such. Otherwise, I could jump up and down SCREAMING that we have just crossed the 98 cent barrier.
A dollar a gig, cool! But no one crossed a real BARRIER.
captcha: barrier
But there's a limit to what you need there (Score:4, Interesting)
You say that a high price on flash will hurt development, but when you can fit Wikipedia English into 9GB + 1GB space for the bzreader index file (a good chunk of human knowledge right there), what more do you need?
You need a maybe 1-2GB more for an OS (not Windows) with office suite, browser, some learning tools, dev platforms, etc. Give yourself and the OS some breathing room, and we're only up to $16 of flash. That's a whole lot less than a fixed disk, and you've still got several GBs free.
So I still don't see how this is much of a problem. You could push prices below $1/GB, but it would take a huge sea change (drop to $.25 or less) to make a real difference in the price of the device they are installed in. There's already plenty of storage for a reasonable price, if you're willing to forgo luxuries like porn :D
Re:No! (Score:4, Interesting)
Hate to break it to you but people have put crummy old spinning rust hard drives in computers that have been all over the planet, in space and under water for some time. Yes, SSDs are preferred these days, but it's not like ruggedized computers just appeared four years ago.
Hell, I remember field portables with FLOPPY DRIVES. And we liked them.
Re:No! (Score:4, Interesting)
I just bought an old Toughbook about a month ago with only a floppy in it. See, there's this software to program the cabin lights on a 747 that runs only on 95 or earlier and needs to produce a single-sided 3.5" floppy to insert in the aircraft. We have teams that travel the world overseeing cabin upgrades and I got tired of trying to get old Dells to live long enough to last more than one trip.