The Race To The Bottom Travels Without DRAM: Low Cost SSDs

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fynxer

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Jun 6, 2015
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Öhhh, where is the conclusion of the analysis?! You rant through out the article that it will be cheaper when the so called expensive DRAM module is removed. Anyone with half a brain can comprehend that it will be cheaper BUT by how much. How big will the impact on the price be, like approximate or in the neighborhood of or anything. Not just say nothing and leave everybody hanging.
 
When you get into netbooks and chromebooks, people just want something cheap that works. If its faster than HDD tech it is a plus, but not something actively sought out by the average consumer of these products.

So how much of a performance hit is there?
Will these changes work their way into higher capacity SSDs?
What are the estimated savings with this? (A repeat of fynxer's valid question.)
 

Bobs Your Uncle

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Apr 15, 2013
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The question about DRAM (materials) cost savings is a good one & I too would have appreciated perhaps a bit more depth in general. It's an interesting topic.

That said, in large scale fabrication & manufacturing, a couple of cents here or there quickly extends to volumetric savings that can easily build to 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars depending on the discipline.

This is, of course, only in direct materials cost & doesn't take into account savings in tangentially related areas, such as the impact of needing to finance smaller outlays, inventory carrying costs across a now smaller array of sku's, etc.

All told, we're talking real money ... if that was truly the point the point of the comment.

If the point, rather, was simply to be glib & demeaning to the author, then cash obviously isn't a concern.
 

CRamseyer

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Jan 25, 2015
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I thought I posted in this already but apparently not.

Here is the deal, so the article says DRAMless but that just doesn't mean no RAM without other changes. As we all know RAM prices change every day, the same with NAND flash. Even if I put my finger on a price right now and say the DRAM costs 12 Dollars, it would change tomorrow, or more likely an hour later.

Look at it as a package. The flash controller doesn't need the channel running to the DRAM so that is one cost savings. The PCB needs less surface area, more savings. Then the actual DRAM.

On most 512GB SSDs the DRAM density is 1GB. Most of the time we're talking about LPDDR3. I just popped over at Newegg and found real LPDDR3 in a DIMM that costs around 8 Dollars per GB.

Looking at it with a microscope isn't really the way to do it. The target price is $50 for a 256GB SSD. I didn't write about it in this article but I've talked about it in several reviews over the last few months.
 
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