SLC Lifetime

[agentenders7]

How long do you think SLC will remain available? Note, this is not a question regarding write endurance but more of a roadmap question.

If the entire market starts moving towards MLC, do you think that SLC will have enough of a market to support its volume production? I've heard of many suppliers coming up with "special" MLC that is intended to have a write endurance near that of SLC.

Does anyone have any data on this market that shows a prediction of the future expectations and market share of MLC, SLC and potentially X3 and X4?

 

[Voo]

SLC was and probably will always be the "niché" enterprise market - but that doesn't mean you can't make a nice profit there, you get way higher margins in there, so no reason to stop producing SLC flash. But the requirements are much higher there so that's probably more interesting for big companies like Samsung or Intel, who can afford the expensive processes needed to sell SLC drives to those companies - it's the same with OEM drives.. you probably won't find a lot of Indinlinx drives in dell pcs..

 

[Beautiful_Life]

Depends how the technology progresses. Consumers, whether individuals or companies and manufacturers care about two things only, cost and performance. Reliability is a cost because consumers factor in the risk of their drive spoiling and having to buy a new one when they decide if a product is worth the price placed on it.

Manufacturers are not interest in technology just for the sake of technology or because it's simply marvelous. It has to make business sense. If MLC chips get reliable or cheap enough for the most data intensive businesses, there is no reason to continue SLC. No one wants to spend more on what they don't need, production material are scare. The more they use today, the less they'll have tomorrow and it'll drive the price of it up too.