Why aren't smaller SSDs the price of flash drives?

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks for the update, cbn. Maybe I'll give Sandisk's "SSD Plus" a spin sometime.

 

[cbn]

JMircron DRAM-less SSD controller:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9369/...-sata-6gbps-jmf815-pcie-controllers-next-year

One of the trends I saw at Computex was the move towards DRAM-less SSD controllers. The JMF608 has been relatively popular in China given its ultra-low cost and its successor, the JMF60F, will be available within the next few months. It features an improved ECC engine and a larger capacity support as well as a new, cheaper QFN packaging. Following this trend, I wouldn't be surprised if JMicron also has plans for DRAM-less versions of the JMF680 and JMF815.

 

[cbn]

It will be interesting to see how low the pricing on these DRAM-less SSD designs go. This, in comparison, to NOS HDD prices:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433743&highlight=nos

New Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at around $13 to $14 shipped.
New Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at around $17 to $18 shipped.
New Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $22 shipped.

New Western Digital Scorpio Blue 80GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $20 shipped.
New Western Digital Scorpio Blue 120GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $27 shipped.
New Western Digital Scorpio Blue 160GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $32 shipped.
New Western Digital Blue 250GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $34 shipped.
New Western Digital Blue 320GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $36 shipped.

(Above prices sampled from Amazon on 6/4/2015)

 

[stockwiz]

would be nice to see these drives replace the slow outdated regular USB flash drives.. get an external M.2 Port or something like that where you can plug it in and take it with you or make USB 3.1 versions. Looks like they already exist in a slightly larger and more expensive form factor.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

would be nice to see these drives replace the slow outdated regular USB flash drives.....

Modern USB 3 flashdrives are pretty fast though. The cheap ones from MicroCenter are like 100/30 MB/sec Read/Write. And there are plenty that are faster:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3.0-thumb-drive-review,3477-7.html

 

[isspkmn]

Most people don't need that much speed on a flash drive. 10GB+ transfers certainly aren't the norm. Although with the cloud becoming a much easier way to transfer small files, this could change.

 

[cbn]

I think when we see the price of SSDs drop to $30 and below, this will really help folks buying used (refurbed) Business laptops.

Using an extreme example, A C2D laptop with a P8700 processor and 2GB RAM should see a very strong improvement simply due to reduced disk swapping penalty compared to the typical small capacity hard drive these laptiops normally use. (I base this on my experience using a C2D desktop with E6550 and various RAM and storage configurations).

And, of course, the more modern laptops (Nehalem, Westemere, Sandy Bridge) stand to benefit greatly as well.

 

[cbn]

CrystalDiskMark results of the Sandisk 120 GB SSD Plus (which uses the DRAM-less Silicon Motion SM2246XT controller) :

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37583824&postcount=8