
SSD Prices Skyrocket as NAND Shortage Deepens, HDD Shortage Looms - homero
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ssd-hdd-shortage-nand-market,33112.html
======
sounds
I'm just not seeing it:

[http://camelcamelcamel.com/Corsair-Flash-Voyager-
Slider-256G...](http://camelcamelcamel.com/Corsair-Flash-Voyager-
Slider-256GB/product/B00H06LM0O?active=price_amazon&context=similar)

[http://camelcamelcamel.com/Patriot-512GB-Supersonic-
Magnum-P...](http://camelcamelcamel.com/Patriot-512GB-Supersonic-Magnum-
PEF512GSMN2USB/product/B01A6YDZ3I)

The article claims consumer USB storage should be the first to suffer the
price increases, but a quick plot of amazon prices shows the opposite, if
anything: prices steadily decreasing.

I guess I should check back in January and see if the prices rose?

~~~
lightbyte
The article says

>We began reporting on the first signs of the looming NAND shortage all the
way back in May

For your first link, May is when the flashdrive was at its lowest point
followed by the price jumping up from ~$70 to ~$100.

------
comboy
Can somebody explain a NAND shortage to me? Because without understanding it,
it sounds like "we are out of bits".

~~~
bsder
Feast/famine cycle--it goes all the way back to DRAM in semiconductors (it's
why Intel got out of DRAM).

Demand for memory spikes (new application, got cheap enough, etc.)

 _All_ the companies begin constructing new fab lines simultaneously (because,
if you are more than a few months late when a new technology comes online,
your competitors get all the nice, fat initial profit margins while you get
the nasty bulk profit margins).

Fab lines take a while to build, but demand is still increasing. Prices spike.

Fab lines come online. Supply skyrockets. Prices crash.

Now that capacity has increased dramatically and prices are low, people start
finding new uses for the cheap memory.

Demand slowly builds. Prices recover slowly.

Suddenly, somebody finds a new application for memory. Demand spikes.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

~~~
hiram112
Out of serious curiosity, what are these new apps that are using more and more
RAM, at least for the last few cycles?

It seems like 8 GB has been the default amount for most consumer PCs for years
now. This is in contrast to 15-20 years ago where PC manufacturers would
really double ram every 2 years.

~~~
bsder
Moore's law broke for DRAM a while ago. RAM now gets more expensive when you
shrink.

For the time being, Moore's Law still seems to be operating for flash. But I
doubt it's got many more iterations left.

------
Animats
OK, up 6%. That's not "skyrocketing".

If 3D storage isn't working, why this HN article today?[1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13107550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13107550)

~~~
wtallis
3D NAND is struggling, but it's not a complete failure. Intel/Micron 3D TLC
NAND is available in volume at a great price but it's slower than Samsung's 3D
TLC. Micron still hasn't shipped any 3D MLC. Samsung's 48-layer 3D NAND
performs well but supply is still pretty tight and some product lines are
close to a year overdue for upgrading from their 32-layer 3D NAND.
Toshiba/SanDisk(Western Digital) 3D NAND is being used in iPhones but is not
yet sold in SSDs; it's not clear if this is due to raw supply limitations or
if they're having trouble with performance or endurance. SK Hynix has been
shipping an insignificant amount of 3D MLC with sub-par density, but no 3D TLC
yet.

Everybody has promises for a future of scaling up the layer count of 3D NAND
to deliver big improvements in price per GB. But they're not offering much to
reassure us that those newer designs will be free from the issues that have
been holding back this year's planned advances.

------
Filligree
The article claims that SMR drives -- Shingled Magnetic Recording -- is slower
than normal HDDs.

The truth is different. Unless you're unlucky enough to have a drive without a
flash write buffer, SMR drives manage similar read rates to normal disks while
having vastly higher write rates. For a while, that is; once the write buffer
is full, it'll drop through the floor.

SMR is bad for RAID, and it's bad for very high throughput writes, but a well-
made disk may actually be faster than the traditional kind for normal users
while having higher capacity. See Samsung's archive disks for a nice example.

You may now ask yourself what's the point, when flash is even faster. Anyone
with enough data that it won't fit on flash should probably use RAID of some
kind.

And there's something to that... But they won't, and you know it, so they
might as well have the capacity.

------
ksec
There were never enough NAND capacity for SSD to replace HDD. And not likely
until 2020 or later.

And with all the NAND manufacture consolidation you will expect NAND prices to
raise all the way to 2018. Samsung, Toshiba, Sandisk/WD, Hynix combine have
more then 90% market shares. i.e They pretty much control the market price.

Things will only get better once the Chinese have their Fabs up in 2018. They
have poured 10s of billions in. These capital intensive business suit them
well when they have no idea where to put their money.

------
kbutler
So it's good I got that black friday deal?

------
KON_Air
How did 'a' in "as" end up being lower case in the title? Becuase if it was
copy/pasted that's curious bug.

~~~
kbutler
There are various standards for capitalization of titles.

Lowercase "as" seems compliant with the current AP recommendations:
"Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of
four or more letters." [http://writingexplained.org/ap-style/ap-style-
composition-ti...](http://writingexplained.org/ap-style/ap-style-composition-
titles)

Could be a feature!

