Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

When Will SSD Be Cheap/Mainstream?

M

modit

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 8, 2008
340
37
Canada
I'd like to buy a 512GB solid state drive in the future but I'm wondering with all the new generations of SSD in the pipeline, when would you consider SSD to be cheap enough and to be produced with the best quality?

I don't want to go 5 years from now and say like some people do that they bought a 8GB USB drive for $200 (if you know what I mean).

Is a $1 per GB a fair early adapter tax or is that still to high of a price to pay?

Thanks!
 
Well considering that the wafer price doesn't really go down much all you can hope for is a process shrink.
The next in pipeline is 19/20nm that would reduce production cost of 1Gbit nand by something around 25-40%. I don't know the schedule but 1 year or so and they should show up.
There may be one more step after that one nothings been announced yet. The physical barrier is really close and I really wouldn't wait for anything beyond 16nm in the foreseeable future.

Just calculate yourself. Unless there is some massive overproduction as it is with DDR3 ram prices won't drop too much. You can expect that about every 18 months or 2 years the price of the same capacity will be about half until that doesn't work anymore and they replace nand flash with something else.

In 2 years you can buy your 512gb SSD for the price of a current 256gb SSD.
Prices most likely won't plummet as some would expect. Flash was expensive when it was only used for little sd cards and stuff but it is a 20 year old technology that is definitely not new tech or anything (the controllers aren't either anymore). It will go down in prices but not dramatically so.
 
Keep your eyes open this Black Friday. That's whn I'm planning on picking one up with a bay or something

Im predicting a drop in pricess across the board of around 100 bucks. Hopefully.
 
Eventually all technology becomes cheap, it start happening when more and more companies jump on the band wagon, the more of something there is the cheaper it becomes because of company competition!
 
Prices Will Drop

As more companies compete and release new kit. It's like thunderbolt. I have used the cable once to transfer some suff from my iMac to my new MBP. I have the 27' display anyway, so am waiting for SSD's to become more mainstream.....Then I'll buy 3 in an enclosure to replace the 3 dedicated HDD's that I use to backup my iMac, Air and MBP at the moment.

I use a caddy, so it's just a case of swapping the drives around for each device. USB is so slow though, after all the recent updates to Lion, IOS5, Aperture and others the final backups took a while.

More products = more competition which should = lower prices.
 
PirateMonkey said:
Eventually all technology becomes cheap, it start happening when more and more companies jump on the band wagon, the more of something there is the cheaper it becomes because of company competition!
Click to expand...

It isn't then jumping on the wagon, so to speak, but the technology being cheaper to produce over time due to advances in hardware.

Sandy bridge processors didn't just get cheap because apple and Samsung and HP started putting them in the machines.
 
I don't think it's just about SSDs becoming cheap. HDDs are getting cheaper too and I have a feeling that manufacturers would rather pass on the savings to the consumer than upgrade performance which is fine by me.

But.. I think $1/GB is a decent price.
 
grahamnp said:
I don't think it's just about SSDs becoming cheap. HDDs are getting cheaper too and I have a feeling that manufacturers would rather pass on the savings to the consumer than upgrade performance which is fine by me.

But.. I think $1/GB is a decent price.
Click to expand...

In the fact that the average consumer doesn't even need an SSD. SSDs are for the niche crowd right now, and if the computer allows a standard hard drive, it will be more than enough for the average person.

I run vms all day on top of a ton of programs and I have no problems with the stock 5200rpm drive that came with my laptop.

I'd get a SSD for Christmas or something... Maybe, of the price goes down a hundred or so (for a 128).
 
Young Spade said:
It isn't then jumping on the wagon, so to speak, but the technology being cheaper to produce over time due to advances in hardware.

Sandy bridge processors didn't just get cheap because apple and Samsung and HP started putting them in the machines.
Click to expand...

That and there are more than just intel CPU's out there :)
 
Macman45 said:
As more companies compete and release new kit. It's like thunderbolt.
Click to expand...
That's nonsense. What matters is the price of NAND flash chips and those are manufactured by very few companies and this won't change. Unless they mispredict demand and prices plummet like DDR3 they dictate the price of the most important stuff in an SSD. It doesn't matter if more and more companies like OWC, OCZ ... stuff more nand into everything.
Actually the kickoff was many years ago with the ipods and nand flash is not at all new that stuff is as mature as it is going to get. The only reason they started putting it into SSDs is because it finally got cheap enough and because of finally some decent MLC controllers.

A wafer costs a certain amount and you just don't understand the industry if you still think that it is just a new technology that still needs more adoption to drive prices down.
 
grahamnp said:
I don't think it's just about SSDs becoming cheap. HDDs are getting cheaper too and I have a feeling that manufacturers would rather pass on the savings to the consumer than upgrade performance which is fine by me.

But.. I think $1/GB is a decent price.
Click to expand...

I hope so, I want SSD to become more common, but in desktops the answer seems easy, have SSD and HDD installed. Even in Macs which are highly concerned about form factor, there is room for both.

The bigger question for me is in laptops, SSD are useful there both for speed and if you drop the laptop. But there being only one drive in most laptops means the 256GB is pushing it for larger laptops which is a user's main machine(And I say this with a 128GB SSD in my Air), although I can see storage space require starting to reverse for many users as the cloud become more and more important.

Although I'm be concerned if the choice of larger HDD are taken away from larger laptops for "pro" users.

----------
dusk007 said:
That's nonsense. What matters is the price of NAND flash chips and those are manufactured by very few companies and this won't change. Unless they mispredict demand and prices plummet like DDR3 they dictate the price of the most important stuff in an SSD. It doesn't matter if more and more companies like OWC, OCZ ... stuff more nand into everything.
Actually the kickoff was many years ago with the ipods and nand flash is not at all new that stuff is as mature as it is going to get. The only reason they started putting it into SSDs is because it finally got cheap enough and because of finally some decent MLC controllers.

A wafer costs a certain amount and you just don't understand the industry if you still think that it is just a new technology that still needs more adoption to drive prices down.
Click to expand...

Wait, are you saying increased adaption isn't going to help drive down prices? The more computers using SSDs, the more SSDs are going to be needed and the more factories to make them will be needed, once the money is invested to create the factories, more production should bring their costs down.

Unless I'm missing something, although I'm expecting the SSD market to work in a manner similar to the HDD market where prices to build XGB disk will slowly go down and as a result we will begin to see 2X disks which are cheaper then XGB disk used to be.
 
dusk007 said:
That's nonsense. What matters is the price of NAND flash chips and those are manufactured by very few companies and this won't change. Unless they mispredict demand and prices plummet like DDR3 they dictate the price of the most important stuff in an SSD. It doesn't matter if more and more companies like OWC, OCZ ... stuff more nand into everything.
Actually the kickoff was many years ago with the ipods and nand flash is not at all new that stuff is as mature as it is going to get. The only reason they started putting it into SSDs is because it finally got cheap enough and because of finally some decent MLC controllers.

A wafer costs a certain amount and you just don't understand the industry if you still think that it is just a new technology that still needs more adoption to drive prices down.
Click to expand...

History dictate otherwise mate, the more of something there is out there, the less demand there is to buy it same goes for milage the older something gets the less new it feels even when bought new, automatically prices plummet as a result, by your view on it 3.5" floppy drives should still be $500 to buy. Companies are already looking into new things to use as wafers that are faster, cooler and more importantly to them cheaper, mainly to yelled them ever closer to that elusive 100% profit margin.
 
My opinion is, after the ultrabooks starts being sold much, the prices will fall because of the increased usage.

But first, the prices will increase, because the demand/supply ratio will increase. But then, when the new investments be done because of this high ratio, the prices will decrease because of the high competition.
 
I think it will be a while yet still. If you're will to pay what it is now, then do so, but I simply can't justify the price myself.
 
zap2 said:
Wait, are you saying increased adaption isn't going to help drive down prices? The more computers using SSDs, the more SSDs are going to be needed and the more factories to make them will be needed, once the money is invested to create the factories, more production should bring their costs down.
Click to expand...
What I am saying is that all the players that can play the game of NAND production already do so and they already produce the stuff on a quite big scale. People here just act as though SSDs is some new stuff that just needs more adoption and will get cheaper. I say Nand is what makes up most of the SSD price and that stuff is NOT new, it is already produced in a huge scale and not on as a little side business.
zap2 said:
Unless I'm missing something, although I'm expecting the SSD market to work in a manner similar to the HDD market where prices to build XGB disk will slowly go down and as a result we will begin to see 2X disks which are cheaper then XGB disk used to be.
Click to expand...
That is what I mean. It is already mostly like the HDD market. HDDs of the same capacity get consistently cheaper not because they are more players/sellers but simply because the can produce the same cap for a cheaper price.


When a new technology shows up such as AMOLED, PRAM it is very expensive and with great adoption prices drop a lot in a few years. Once a Technology like LCD Panels is very common and many factories produce it the price drop is mostly due to technology advancements and not economies of scale.
Some people here just act as though SSDs are so new that in the next couple years prices will plummet to some HDD level because of economies of scale. I only meant to say they will go down because of technology advancements primarily and people shouldn't expect a huge plummeting of prices.

@PirateMonkey you totally missed the point.
 
SSD's have already dropped dramatically in price over the last few years, and will continue to come down. But do I think you'll see 500+ GB SSD for under 200... pry not for a while if at all.
 
hi

sad to say will take another 5-7 years...remember 6 years ago. raptor 10k rpm hard drives were as expensive as the ssds today.



modit said:
I'd like to buy a 512GB solid state drive in the future but I'm wondering with all the new generations of SSD in the pipeline, when would you consider SSD to be cheap enough and to be produced with the best quality?

I don't want to go 5 years from now and say like some people do that they bought a 8GB USB drive for $200 (if you know what I mean).

Is a $1 per GB a fair early adapter tax or is that still to high of a price to pay?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
Here's something that will make you feel better about SSD prices... remember when a 3.1gb spinning drive was 399$ After a 30$ rebate? 1 gb a GB for superfast storage seems like a no brainer then in comparison lol.

And this was 1996 dollars...

Bestbuy 1996 Mac ad
RZDwn.jpg

WAJnP.jpg
 
fibrizo said:
Here's something that will make you feel better about SSD prices... remember when a 3.1gb spinning drive was 399$ After a 30$ rebate? 1 gb a GB for superfast storage seems like a no brainer then in comparison lol.

And this was 1996 dollars...
Click to expand...

I still remember those days where a 540 MB HD was $500 CAD (Not sure how much it is in US) and the IDE vs EIDE issue.

The price of SSD will drop, but probably won't be a while (perhaps a few years?).
 
Can't wait for when buying something like a 1TB SSD will be like buying a 1TB HDD. :p

I wonder if SSDs will ever drop to the same $/GB ratio as HDD? Or will they both continue to drop at a certain rate forever, never closing the distance in price? I hope for the former to happen :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back