Flash Forecast: Shortage Persists Into Mid-2018, Retail Pricing Steady

[Guest]

Retail pricing for solid-state drives will remain steady for most of 2018 as we see it now. This would be a great time for fab companies to separate from smaller companies offering products but other markets will make that difficult.

Flash Forecast: Shortage Persists Into Mid-2018, Retail Pricing Steady : Read more

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Guess that means I won't see a price drop on the Samsung 960 Pro anytime soon.

 

[takeshi7]

I smell collusion and price fixing. It's not like the DRAM/NAND manufacturers haven't done it before, and it's extremely fishy that all of them decided to shut down their fabs to transition to 3D all at once.

 

[hannibal]

It means that prices will get higher, because demand is higher than production.
It also means that the prices will stay high quite long after the shortage is getting better. New ssd 2019?

 

[dudmont]

I smell collusion and price fixing. It's not like the DRAM/NAND manufacturers haven't done it before, and it's extremely fishy that all of them decided to shut down their fabs to transition to 3D all at once.

The efforts required to hold a collusion group together aren't ever strong enough, the incentive to cheat is always stronger. One word, OPEC. 😉

 

[Guest]

I agree collusion is likely. Remember the collusion of RAM in from 1998 to 2002? The key players

"Among the companies involved were major electronics players including Hitachi, Hynix, Samsung and Toshiba."

Do any of these companies sound familiar?

 

[takeshi7]

I agree collusion is likely. Remember the collusion of RAM in from 1998 to 2002? The key players

"Among the companies involved were major electronics players including Hitachi, Hynix, Samsung and Toshiba."

Do any of these companies sound familiar?

Don't forget about Micron and Infineon, who were also found guilty.

 

[plateLunch]

Where are the Samsung fabs located? You ain't seen nothing yet in prices if North Korea blows up the Samsung fabs.

 

[CRamseyer]

Samsung has a couple in South Korea and a couple in China that produce NAND. I thought about adding something about that but thought best to leave it out. North Korea has threatened war a few times a year for the last thirty years.

The other variable is Toshiba vs. Western Digital/SanDisk. I also left that out because I can't predict the outcome.

 

[mikewinddale]

"That's why you'll now be able to use up to four CPUs and up to 6TB of memory, which is double and triple, respectively, what's supported in Windows 10 Pro right now."

I'm confused. This implies that until now, Windows has only supported 2 CPUs. But consumer-grade Intel Core processors have been quad-core for a long time now. And I've never heard of anyone having problems with 6/8/10/12-core Broadwell-E processors in Windows. Nor have I heard any problems with using Ryzen with Windows.

And I've got a quad-core AMD with multithreading, and Windows has no problem acting as if it has 8 logical CPUs.

So what's the story?

 

[CRamseyer]

It means physical CPUs and not cores.

 

[the nerd 389]

Why do I get the feeling that it'll be a while before I see an SSD with a half-decent endurance rating?

With ThreadRipper, I can now destroy most SSDs in a matter of weeks. Wait... is that why there's a shortage? 😛

 

[CountMike]

@mikewinddale
Number of cores is not same thing as number of processors.

 

[Christopher1]

Ah.... so they mean actual complete processors, as in 4 I7 processor packages.
Well if that is what we are going to.... yippee! Though I hope that game and program makers will not be 'lazy coders' and write badly because processers will take up the slack and massive amounts of RAM will take up the slack.

 

[thehardwarehacker]

this makes me really glad i got my 850 EVO when i did.

 

[Guest]

I got a few SLC SSD'S myself when they were considered "obsolete". Well, they will last another decade at least. Enterprise SLC with built-in full encryption hardware.

Where can I find SLC today? The "industry" claims there is no demand, but they are fake news. There is a demand. But you have to be a strong player to get access. Samsung still sells SLC drives to a few partners. But you, no, you are screwed. Expect your drive to last a few years, and then replace it.