The hype surrounding the use of flash memory in personal computers remains high, but so is market adoption at companies such as Dell.
This according to Paul Prince (pictured), chief technology officer of enterprise computing at computer maker Dell.
Prince, who spoke at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA, on Tuesday, said he expects cut-throat competition among manufacturers to continue. Their struggle has led to aggressive price cuts, rapid improvement in memory capacities – and red ink at some producers.
While the competition could mean more tough days ahead for makers, it should continue to broaden the market, Prince said.
“The surprise is the rapid pace these things have happened,” he said, referring to the use of flash in laptops and other “client” products – often at the expense of traditional hard drives.
Both flash memory and hard drives store data inside computers. But while hard drives use thin spinning platters, flash memory is comprised of a semiconductor, making it less fragile.
“What we’ve seen is the reliability and durability aspects (of flash) have resonated,” Prince said. On the other hand, the potential power savings in a laptop is small since only a modest percentage of a machine’s energy goes toward running the hard drive.
He said Moore’s Law suggests flash will continue:
1) Falling in price 30% to 40% a year;
2) Seeing memory densities increase 50% a year; and
3) Achieving power reductions of 30% a year.
Of course this leaves open the possibility some producers will run at a faster pace and spur more competition, he said. But the good side of their ingenuity is it will assure broader use in consumer and enterprise computing, he said.
by Mark Boslet, Editor-at-Large.
Here’s a video excerpt of Paul Prince Flash Memory Summit keynote on SSDs:
