Comments on: Samsung: Solid state will match hard-drive price

Due to price declines in flash memory, solid-state drives will hit price parity with hard-disk drives in the next few years, company says.

[holywarrior007]

"So flash and SSD manufacturers are under a lot of pressure to make a profit," .

What does it mean. Price per gigs go up or down in this year?

[Lerianis3]

I'd say DOWN for both SSD and flash memory. We are still in a recession, regardless of the need to 'make a profit'. Really, I'd LOVE to have a SSD in my computer, at least as my main "never gets anything or barely anything written to it" drive.

[rucknrun]

I want to slap one of these in my Playstation. That would rock!!

[BtmnHatesRbn]

What does "rock;" mean? And you're still using an original PlayStation? How do you get a hard drive in it? Do tell.

[Jon]

Seems like to me the logical thing to do is lower the price so more of us will/can afford to buy . . . volume is essential to good sales, but quality and service are a lost art it seems. I would be willing to pay a few more dollars for good service and better quality of product. But, not for shoddy workmanship or bad service. Those days are long gone for me. My money is too tight to over pay for crap.

[mike.gw]

Looks like traditional HD manufacturers better start snapping up or partnering with Flash manufacturers!

[blurble]

Price decline my butt. Memory has been cheap since forever. They just realize in this economy no one is willing to be ********* with high prices anymore. Those idiot news articles claiming throngs of people snapping up $2,000 plasma TVs in this economy, is a crock. The people who buy these things are KIDS, who rely on mommy & daddy for money to upgrade their PC to to waste their life playing the latest *** video game. Well, parental units are unemployed, and if they can't find a job, good luck for sonny boy. You're more likely to see a 90 yr old begging to mow people lawns for cash due to low SSI paychecks. And with all those businesses going under, they're not spending on IT either. CISCO is even going under.
[CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.

[Lerianis3]

Actually, it isn't a crock. I have a friend who works for Best Buy.... he has been SHOCKED at how many adults are buying LCD TV's even in this economy. I think that most of the 'problems' are severely overstated in most of this country.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Actually, the economy isn't bad. Stocks are just down. Unemployment claims are matching levels during the previous four years, and people are still making the same amount of money. Go ahead, drink the Kool-Aid of media-created bad economy. Even Soetoro/Obama has come out and said he economy isn't as bad as been falsely reported.

[texaslabrat]

@BtmnHatesRbn

LOL. I hope nobody's relying on you for financial/economic advice. I could post a list of data that proves how foolish your assertions are, but I imagine the average reader here already realizes that. I will leave you with one number: 9.4% unemployment nationwide...and it's been quite a while (25+ years) since we've seen those kinds of numbers.

[nutso101]

I agree. They are in it just for the profit. There is no way flash memory should be double that of regular let's say a hard drive unit. There is no motor to spin, less power to consume, less space to use and it would be more cost effective to install. Once they realize the consumer won't spend they will start to lower prices. Don't be greedy . The bottom line.

[john_profit]

"They are in it just for the profit."

And why else are people in business? Genius!

[dream_fly]

"Solid-state drives, which use flash memory chips as the storage medium, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives"

From what I learned, only READ speed is "typically" faster.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

You learned wrong. You don't read enough of I, Cringely. SSD is low-power and doesn't have to "whirl" up to access data, and stays cool, without heating up. Again, you learned wholly wrong. Did you learn this from a Science Channel show or something, or an actual computer science class at a university?

[dream_fly]

Well, take a look at this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-memoright,1926-7.html
Most SSDs are pretty slow. The more interesting is the Application Performance which the best SSD couldn't match the WD VelociRaptor; and they didn't test with the 15K drives.
So now it's your turn to give us some typical, not theoretical proof. I'll happy to stand corrected.

[Peter Glaskowsky]

Cringely is hardly a reliable source for technical information.

[texaslabrat]

@dreamfly:

That article is nearly a year old. There has been a completely new generation that has been released since. Today's SSD's, in general, completely destroy traditional HDDs in both writing and reading. That's why there's such a push to put them in high-throughput enterprise applications (see Sun's new product lines) as well as laptops where the typical 5200rpm (or slower) drives that are mandated by power consumption concerns are just abysmally slow with today's multimedia apps. Try looking at some benchmarks from late 2008 or preferably 2009 and you'll see what I mean ;)

[gerrrg]

SSD prices may be going down 40-60% annually, but HD prices are also dropping an average 40-45% annually.

The premium one pays for SSDs is so high, I think it'll take more than a few years - more like 5+ - before SSDs are competitively priced to hard drives. I wish it wasn't so - as I'd love to have a semi-permanent backup solution with no moving parts to break - but I seriously doubt that SSDs will become price competitive with HD.

[Scopip]

Your statement is only true if you are talking about data backup / media files.

60 Gig SSD's are already at $100. It is totally ludicrous they are still building laptops that have platters. It should already be industry standard to have encrypted SSD drives on all portable devices.

[BigGuns149]

Only 40-60%? I would peg the drops in SSD prices closer to 50-75%, but even if your more conservative estimate is correct SSDs are still catching up and at some point will reach parity with HDDs. If we are looking at enterprise grade 15K HDDs the future is basically today because SSDs are already rather price competitive in that market, but standard consumer drives will clearly take several years more to reach parity.

Samsung was a bit vague into what they meant by the "next few years," but I don't think it is a question of IF SSDs will become price competitive, but when. Unless there is some yet unknown limitation that caps SSD capacity or a real huge revolution in HDDs I don't see anything that will stop SSDs from eventually reaching parity with HDDs in every market sector.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Joe Blow can get by with a 15 GB HD, believe it or not, so the sizes dont' have to be too big for them.

[Peter Glaskowsky]

Brian Beard's remarks were probably taken slightly out of context. It's true that the price-per-bit for any given size of hard disk will eventually be beaten by solid-state disks, but the largest hard disks will remain cheaper than a flash disk of the same capacity for the forseeable future.

[chillkc]

How will SSDs replacing HDDs extend the battery life of a typical laptop? Are SSDs green?

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Not "green" at all, but there are no moving parts. A hard disk is composed of layers of platters on a spindle that has tons of moving parts, like the air compressor that keeps the platters level and spaced apart, the read/write head, etc. With all of these parts gone, the SSD uses very little power, about as much as a RAM chip, and doesn't heat up as much, if at all. Also, drop it. You're data's mostly safe as long as the chips don't crack.

[imhodudes]

"Flash on a dollar-per-gigabyte basis will reach price parity, at some point, with hard disk drives in the next few years"

So, a 100 terabyte flash drive for $79.95? I'll believe that when I see it.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Nobody wrote that. You're being rude by speculating out your desire instead of being patient. What do you need 100 TB for anyways? MPEG-2 porn files? Seriously. Pirates need these sizes of storage, not Joe Blow.

[BigGuns149]

That will be a while, but if you live long enough (10-15 years) it will likely happen. That being said a lot of people would be happy with far less storage than that. 100TB would be enough to store EVERY Blu-ray title on the market right now (~2000 discs).

I don't question that there are some people who will find a use for still higher capacities, but at some point I think that speed rather than capacity will become the leading factor that people use to determine what storage technology that they use. For those people not using their computers are HD DVR or some other use space intensive use I think a lot of people would prefer a 1TB SLC SSD over a 8TB 7200RPM HDD. A some point capacity doesn't offer much value for a lot of people.

[jaw762]

My coworker was on his amazon account at work and his purchase history had a 1GB flash drive that he had paid $40 for just a few years ago. I paid the same for 8GB a few months ago. Not precise here, but that means that 2-3 years has seen SS memory drop in price 8x. A few more multiples of 8 won't take long to get to prices that we all can afford. 100TB might be a little much to expect for $80, at least for awhile.

[WDS2]

"What do you need 100 TB for anyways?"

Statements like this always look stupid a few years down the way. I remember when we put the first working 120 MB (yes, megabyte) hard drive in a PC. One of the engineers said, "Wow, what would anyone ever need all that space for?"

[inachu1]

I'll be buying one but only as a second drive and use it for my windows swap file.
the speed increase should be between 10%-25%

[blurble]

You don't need it for a swap file, that's what 8GB of 1333DDR-3 is for, which transfers at 6,000MB/s. FAR faster than any SSD, like 30x. Anyone who still has their swap file turned on in WIN is incompetent, unless it's for PhotoChop files, where you'll need 32GB.

[scottthesculptor]

about time.
I got an HP Omnibook 300 flash in 1995
(hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=123)
paid an extra $700 for an additional 20MB of PCMCIA flash. (!)
Thing would run 5 hours on 4 AA alkalines, 8 hours on a new NiMH.

10 years ahead of the mainstream

[gsmiller88]

"Samsung expects solid-state drives to reach price parity with hard-disk drives WITHIN THE NEXT FEW YEARS"

I think Samsung deserves an award for their awesome research skills.

/sarcasm

[revrend23]

is anyone really willing to pay more for 500G or 1000G in a _laptop_? some will, most will not.
IMHO for laptops --- the tipping point will be when cost/G for a 128G SSD gets close enough to a 160G HDD. and when the cost/G for a 256G HDD gets close enough to a 500G, 320G or 250G laptop HDD.
then the benefits of SSD low power, better reliability, performance will be acceptable for mainstream
I personally believe this will be back to school 2009

[firefoxluva95]

I wish...after all. I'd love to put Windows 7 on an SSD and take it for a spin...or I won't be spinning as SSDs don't spin. I have an 80 G hard drive so anything out there right now is better.