In the past few years, prices for solid state drives have been steadily declining due to the drop in the cost of flash memory (NAND). This was due to the excessive production of planar flash memory (2D NAND) by many companies in the old well-developed manufacturing process.

The smooth and steady decline in prices for SSDs was slightly disturbed in Q3. 2016 year. It is expected that in the coming weeks, an increase in the cost of NAND will affect the cost of the final product. New batches of SSDs will come at new, higher prices.

According to the latest reportDRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, the cost of flash memory rose in the III quarter. 2016 year. Analysts explain this by a decrease in production, which is associated with the transition to a more complex “vertical” 3D NAND flash memory in production. In it, transistors are packed in a multilayer structure, as a result of which the information density per unit area increases, wear decreases and the speed of work increases.

3D NAND production is much more complicatedthan the production of planar flash memory. For example, Samsung’s three-dimensional 3D V-NAND cell is a cylinder, the outer layer of which is a control shutter, and the inner one is an insulator. The cells are located one above the other and form a stack, inside of which there passes a cylindrical channel made of polycrystalline silicon common for all cells. The number of cells in the stack is equivalent to the number of layers of flash memory.



The first production of 3D NAND was mastered by Samsung. In 2013, she announced the release of the first three-dimensional MLC chips with 24 layers, and a year later the 3D implementation received a TLC flash memory with 32 layers. Following her, the rest followed. Toshiba and SanDisk teamed up to release the BiCS 3D NAND flash memory (Bit Cost Scalable). The Micron / Intel Alliance also developed its own three-dimensional flash memory and started production this year.

Just at the end of 2016, the moment came when manufacturers began to actively develop the mass production of a new type of flash memory. It is not surprising that this technological transition was not without problems.

Price forecast

According to the DRAMeXchange forecast, average contract prices for drives with MLC NAND memory will grow by 6-10% in the near future, while drives with TLC memory will rise in price by 6-9%. Three bits of information are stored in one TLC cell, and two bits in one MLC cell. For this reason, TLC NAND memory drives are usually cheaper than MLC NAND with the same capacity, but they withstand fewer write / erase cycles and have a noticeably lower write speed. It should be noted that 20,000 write / erase cycles are declared in Samsung TLC three-dimensional memory, that is, there is no TLC NAND problem there.

Hints on the rise in price of solid-state drives became noticeable in the second half of 2016, and analysts predict a further continuation of this trend.

For example, look at the price changes for popular SSD models on Amazon. The cost of the Crucial MX300 525GB drive increased slightly in July and practically did not decrease since then, but reached a maximum at the end of November.



The cost of the older, but still quite popular 120GB Kingston V300 model has been continuously falling for several years, but the process stopped around the middle of 2016 - and the cost began to grow slightly.



The cost of drives is subject to seasonal fluctuations. It traditionally falls slightly, responding to increased demand before the holidays, and then slightly increases. But at the end of this year and the beginning of next year, prices will be additionally affected by a clear NAND deficit in the market, so the cost of solid-state drives will increase by at least a few percent.

Deficit

The current shortage of flash memory can not be compared with the jump in prices for HDDs in the fall of 2011 , when factories for the production of hard drives and accessories for them temporarily went out of order due to the flood in Thailand, and prices for HDD temporarily doubled . One can recall the powerful shortage of RAM in 1999, when after the earthquake of August 19 in Taiwan almost all factories producing memory chips went down. In a few weeks, memory has faded from the market. The cost of the 32 MB DIMM running module itself rose from $ 28 to $ 85.

Now there were no natural disasters. Short-term “shortage” of goods on the market is a natural phenomenon that occurs after a long period of price reduction. Then the prices are adjusted a little - and the market finds equilibrium.

DRAMeXchange analysts warn of tacit consensus (“cartel conspiracy”) between the largest flash memory manufacturers in order to maximize their profits. This “consensus” will also push prices up in the near future until a sufficiently large number of companies have mastered 3D NAND production technologies - and again there will not be an excess of supply in the market exceeding demand. From the current temporary price increase, Samsung will get the maximum profit.

The demand for solid-state drives is growing quite stably, despite rising prices. The difference in price between SSD and HDD has reached a minimum level.



Analysts predict that by the end of 2017, 30% of all computers sold (desktop computers and laptops) will be equipped with SSD drives, and next year there will be 50% of them.