Why no decrease in price of SSD drives?

[jtvang125]

I've been wanting to pick up a SSD drive for my htpc. I started looking at a few of them about 2-3 months ago and just checked again today. I'm surprise the prices have remained pretty much the same. I really thought they would have atleast gone down $5-10 by now with more and more companies getting in SSD production.

 

[Idontcare]

Nand suppliers have been operating at negative profit margins since Q1 2008, expecting already unsustainable prices to continue to be reduced is not practical.

Nand prices need to plateau (or rise) for a while, 6 months or more, so the natural cadence of technology improvements to reduce manufacturing costs can catch up with the already low prices so the memory makers can recoup their investment costs.

 

[Mwing]

supply demand reaches equalibrium maybe?

 

[taltamir]

As it stands, all controllers on the market EXCEPT the intel controller can ONLY use the samsung NAND chips.
the intel controller is not sold by itself, only bundled with intel NAND.

So samsung has a de facto monopoly on the price of NAND chips in SSD drives. Non SSD controllers, such as thumb drives, allow the use of competing flash sources, and are thus much much cheaper per GB. (the Jmicron controller is only 10$ and the indilinx controller used in the vertex is only 15$)

Jmicron is about to release the first controller in SSD history capable of running NAND from more than samsung (specifically, samsung, intel, and a few others) We should expect it to reduce prices a lot. (it also supposedly fixes the Jmicron stuttering issue)

PS... what about other NAND makers? they make things like flash storage for CAMERAS.

 

[Idontcare]

I know its been talked about in another thread, but what is it exactly about the Samsung flash that makes it special in comparison to the other flash makers. Not talking cost/density...I mean electrically.

NAND Flash is a standard, just like DDR2, that is why it can be a commodity (see dramexchange)...so is samsung making non-standard flash?

If they aren't then I don't understand how/why (outside of cost reasons) existing controllers can't work with NAND from competing flash manufacturers from a technical standpoint.

Yes Samsung leads the pack in terms of bit density and cost/GB...but how does that preclude a nand flash controller from working with less dense and higher cost nand flash?

(again, I am not arguing that the samsung-exclusive thing is false, I accept it as true, but I am just trying to understand why/how it came about)

 

[taltamir]

well, samsung flash is SEVERAL nodes ahead of everyone but intel, and is a node ahead of intel. So maybe it has to do with voltages? maybe it takes a much lower voltage... Or maybe they make non standard nand, i don't know.

 

[PedoClown]

Well, here's something of a price decrease, although the drives are brand new and nobody has reviewed them yet: Kingston's V-series. Just saw them on Newegg and they appear to be in stock. The 64GB is at $148.99 ($60 cheaper than the 60GB OCZ Vertex, and the same price as a 30GB Vertex. Granted, the latter currently has a $20 mail-in rebate to knock it down to $128.49) and the 128GB is $273.99 - compared to the 120GB Vertex at $355. Kingston also put a 3 year warranty on them - which is as long as Intel's and a year longer than OCZ, G.Skill, and Corsair's Samsung drives.

It appears to be a joint venture between Kingston and Toshiba but more information than that is hard to come by. I can't imagine either of those companies being oblivious to the whole JMicron debacle, so hopefully their controller has no serious drawbacks. Its specs do show relatively low read/write speeds, but I'm looking forward to reading the reviews.

 

[VaultDweller]

Originally posted by: PedoClown
I can't imagine either of those companies being oblivious to the whole JMicron debacle, so hopefully their controller has no serious drawbacks. Its specs do show relatively low read/write speeds, but I'm looking forward to reading the reviews.

Yeah, if those offer decent performance and avoid , I'd consider grabbing one of the 64GB drives for my laptop.

 

[taltamir]

to be perfectly honest, I don't judge jmicron too harshly, their crappy controller was on the market WAY ahead of anyone else.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: taltamir
As it stands, all controllers on the market EXCEPT the intel controller can ONLY use the samsung NAND chips.
the intel controller is not sold by itself, only bundled with intel NAND.

So samsung has a de facto monopoly on the price of NAND chips in SSD drives. Non SSD controllers, such as thumb drives, allow the use of competing flash sources, and are thus much much cheaper per GB. (the Jmicron controller is only 10$ and the indilinx controller used in the vertex is only 15$)

Jmicron is about to release the first controller in SSD history capable of running NAND from more than samsung (specifically, samsung, intel, and a few others) We should expect it to reduce prices a lot. (it also supposedly fixes the Jmicron stuttering issue)

PS... what about other NAND makers? they make things like flash storage for CAMERAS.

the flash interface in samsung, hynix, toshiba , and sandisk chips may all be similar or identical becuase they are all licensed from sandisk.

But yes the fact that every nand manufacturer and memory manufacturer in general is losing money (to the point some ofthe taiwanese ones had to get govt loans like promos etc) means that they are not going to lose even more money to give us cheaper nand.

that and with the lack of corporate credit, the speed at which process nodes changeover might slow down, so i would expect prices to stabilize or even rise this year (the controllers might make it cheaper, but the flash itself probably wont get much cheaper this year)

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: taltamir
As it stands, all controllers on the market EXCEPT the intel controller can ONLY use the samsung NAND chips.
the intel controller is not sold by itself, only bundled with intel NAND.

So samsung has a de facto monopoly on the price of NAND chips in SSD drives. Non SSD controllers, such as thumb drives, allow the use of competing flash sources, and are thus much much cheaper per GB. (the Jmicron controller is only 10$ and the indilinx controller used in the vertex is only 15$)

Jmicron is about to release the first controller in SSD history capable of running NAND from more than samsung (specifically, samsung, intel, and a few others) We should expect it to reduce prices a lot. (it also supposedly fixes the Jmicron stuttering issue)

PS... what about other NAND makers? they make things like flash storage for CAMERAS.

the flash interface in samsung, hynix, toshiba , and sandisk chips may all be similar or identical becuase they are all licensed from sandisk.

But yes the fact that every nand manufacturer and memory manufacturer in general is losing money (to the point some ofthe taiwanese ones had to get govt loans like promos etc) means that they are not going to lose even more money to give us cheaper nand.

that and with the lack of corporate credit, the speed at which process nodes changeover might slow down, so i would expect prices to stabilize or even rise this year (the controllers might make it cheaper, but the flash itself probably wont get much cheaper this year)

They already have 32nm almost done. I don't think they'll delay 32nm because it helps the bottom line.

 

[PedoClown]

Originally posted by: taltamir
to be perfectly honest, I don't judge jmicron too harshly, their crappy controller was on the market WAY ahead of anyone else.

Well I wouldn't judge them harshly if their controller had been designed for a different application and had just been thrown into SSDs by eager manufacturers. But if they designed it for use in general-purpose SSDs then bah, I say. I think waiting up to 2000ms for some writes, instead of the ~10ms for the disks they're supposed to replace is just wrong.

 

[taltamir]

mmm, maybe i should judge them than...

 

[blyndy]

Originally posted by: taltamir
As it stands, all controllers on the market EXCEPT the intel controller can ONLY use the samsung NAND chips.

That is what ONFI is supposed to solve, right?

"ONFI seeks to standardize the low-level interface to raw NAND flash chips..."

 

[taltamir]

yes, they will be like the jedec of nand.

The ONFI consortium is led by several prominent manufacturers of NAND flash memory:
Hynix
Intel
Micron Technology
Phison
Sony
Numonyx

Samsung, the world's largest manufacturer of NAND flash, is notably absent from the ONFI consortium

Amusing... samsung fears losing their de facto monopoly so they are not cooporating with onfi. Why compete when you can just take away people's choice?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir
Amusing... samsung fears losing their de facto monopoly so they are not cooporating with onfi. Why compete when you can just take away people's choice?

Samsung is a titan, second only to Intel in semiconductor sales and the corporation itself actually dwarfes Intel by nearly 3 to 1 in revenue (>$100B annual sales).

For people who worry about Intel's potential for monopoly abuse, there are bigger things, far bigger things, that go bump in the night in the global grand scheme of things.