Everyone wants to be packing some of that sweet flash memory in their notebooks these days, but not everyone wants to shell out such high prices for such relatively measly capacities. Well along comes Santa Ana-based STEC Inc. with what it claims to be a breakthrough NAND technology that will allegedly slash the price of solid state drives down to just $2/GB within two years; specifically, the company says it has successfully leveraged so-called multi-level cell-based (MLC) NAND into
SSDs with 90MB/s read / 60MB/s write speeds -- good enough to exceed platter-based hard drive performance at prices supposedly half of what they are today. STEC is currently shipping manufacturing samples between 32GB and an impressive 512GB (in a 2.5-inch form factor; the largest 1.8-inch drive is 128GB), although it remains to be seen how much of those savings will be passed along to the consumer when these eventually come to market.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Flashpoint @ Dec 4th 2007 3:05PM
STANDARDIZE YOUR SIZES.
low end computers in the business and public schooling communities should have a clear and easy choice of 30, 50, 80 and 100 GB SSD drives.
One Laptop per child models can get away with 4GB SD cards.
Gaming communities, entertainment and special interest computing patrons should be given more expensive access to higher capacity drives.
enzo @ Dec 4th 2007 3:49PM
Sizes are based on the binary number system converted to decimal, as that's how data is stored...
Chad @ Dec 4th 2007 5:06PM
why does it matter if its 64 GB instead of 60? It's not a like a "60 GB" hard drive is actually 60 GB anyway. It's more like 56 GB. That's because Hard drive makers use the 1000 scale instead of a 1024 scale, (apparently to shut up people like you). I prefer to know exactly how many Gigs I'm getting. But either way, I know a 32 GB hard drive is half the size of a 64 GB in the same way a 50 GB is half of 100 GB. I also could probably figure out, (even if I'm a gamer) that a 128 GB hard drive and a 125 GB hard drive are about the same size. And a 64 GB solid state hard drive could probably hold about half as much as my 120 GB standard hard drive. But if all gamers are like you, maybe I'm expecting too much.
Mark @ Dec 4th 2007 3:13PM
Prices will have to come down further than that.
shanoboy @ Dec 4th 2007 3:30PM
Isn't the life span of flash memory and solid state disks substantially less than that of the platter based hard drives?
I'd hate to invest $2 a gig on a hard drive that could literally wear out after a few good years of heavy use.
dave @ Dec 4th 2007 5:11PM
flash NAND has an unlimited amount of read cycles, it's limited write cycles (and price) that put regular platters above NAND in terms of popularity. either way, since NAND has less power usage and is more drop-resistant, mobile devices are 100% better off with NAND, and $2/GB memory instead of $10/GB like NAND is now.......that means that iPod touch is going to actually become affordable.
Ryan Trevisol @ Dec 4th 2007 3:42PM
I thought the mtbf was 2,000,000 hours? That's 220+ years.
The Schizo @ Dec 4th 2007 3:49PM
you are correct, the whole volatile flash failure problem was solved a couple years ago. It's no longer valid.
deedeedee @ Dec 4th 2007 3:48PM
All facts aside, I just cant believe how ugly their logo is, my dog's poo look better than that...
they aint very creative with their name either...STEC...what the heck
wsnideman @ Dec 4th 2007 4:03PM
I've been predicting the death of the hard drive for a while now. Our children will date us by saying we used spinning magnetic disks to record data- How archaic!
applefreak @ Dec 4th 2007 4:24PM
cheap...
@ $2 per GB a 512GB flash drive would cost $1024
I COULD GET A COMPUTER FOR THAT MUCH
signed- jobless
Grizz @ Dec 4th 2007 4:41PM
Its the speed of dreams at that capacity, and saves electricity too!
Michael @ Dec 4th 2007 4:43PM
Try and configure a Dell laptop with a 64 GB SSD in it. That'll add about $1000 to the cost of your notebook. If my math is right, that's $15.63 per gigabyte.
Therefore I think $2/gig is a far more reasonable price, albeit for a slightly slower technology in a slightly larger format (2.5" vs 1.8")
horseblind @ Dec 4th 2007 5:11PM
Speeds will pick up, prices will shrink. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 1,8" factor in two years or just shortly after.
Thunderbuck @ Dec 4th 2007 5:21PM
Sorry, this doesn't make all rotating media obsolete. This is still considerably more expensive per GB than a traditional hard drive.
I really want one, though. I still love the idea of having a 32 or 64GB SSD for my system partition, and a nice big hard drive for the rest of my stuff. I'm betting that's the system of the future...
Thunderbuck @ Dec 4th 2007 5:24PM
If they can actually follow through on these claims I don't care if their logo IS a pile of dog poo.
(as long as I don't have to put it on the front of my case ;) )
Naveed @ Dec 4th 2007 6:23PM
yeah, that price drop isnt impressive. I think those are good numbers for within 1 year, not two
Vincent @ Dec 4th 2007 6:53PM
C'mon guys, be more optimist please. 2-3 years ago i paid my PSP 2GB card 150$, thats 75$/GB, in 3 years it got to about 20$ for the 2GB card, thats 7.5x lower in 3 years. For those saying 2$/GB is still alot, yes, in terms of storage it is, but what about in terms of speed? 'whiting 2 years' So that means, in ~5 years, we will see 512GB's SSD going on for less then 80$? Man, thats half a terabyte, for 2/3 the cost of a 500gb today ;) in ~5years....
nikster @ Dec 6th 2007 10:29PM
I want to add to that that predictions of what they will be able to do in 2 years don't really mean all that much.
Maybe they'll have a 512GB FlashSSD out for $1000 by that time, but maybe it'll have to compete with a $200 1TB disk drive of the same size and at 2x the speed by then.
DerekPowell @ Dec 6th 2007 12:21AM
It's also highly possible that the data demands won't increase THAT dramatically. What with HD video becoming standardized, and video being the most demanding thing around as far as storage goes. It will probably be a while yet before we start watching movies in 2k or 4k, 1080p ought to do us for a while. I might be putting my foot in my mouth, but I have a feeling storage costs may begin to come down faster than our needs will increase.
and oh, what a wonderful world...