3D NAND exists because it keeps the process at a larger node like 40nm, while stacking to get the same areal density of a 20nm class device.
So wouldn't they mean the other way around?
So wouldn't they mean the other way around?
Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*
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I probably misunderstood as it was too technical for me, but it was that the cells are robust because they went back up to 40nm, so it's not going to get a lot smaller without hitting the same wall. If they keep the cells at this size or another few nodes, they must add more and more layers, which can't go on forever, because of yield? Or is that precisely the goal?
I mean is it going to be 20nm 3d at the size of 10nm planar... etc... or will it stop cell size there and continue up with more layer?
I mean is it going to be 20nm 3d at the size of 10nm planar... etc... or will it stop cell size there and continue up with more layer?
For the Apple example I am using Android as the alternative where the most common complaint by switchers is that 'It's too complex'. Consumers buy consoles to feed them discs or bits and start games without having to futx with anything configurability and expandability are very low on the purchasing priorities (I don't believe it was ever cited as a factor in the PS3's favour in any consumer survey). The X360 Arcade driveless sku was a product of MS experience with the PS2/XBox battles where the cost of a mechanical hdd was a major differential between the BOMs of the two consoles, given Sonys choices and their sky high BOM for PS3 the low cost Arcade SKU was almost redundant but the decisions that led to it's creation meant it lived on for a while. However within 3 years it was effectively redundant as games started to demand disc installs to alleviate the awful speed of the optical drive so MS caved and killed their 'must run off disc' tech reqs.
eMMC NAND != SSD. Phone memory operates at a fraction of the read/write limits of SSDs, typically they operate in the 80-100Mb/s peak transfer rates to ensure low power consumption i.e. [si]slower[/i] than a mechanical drive and they lack an SSD controller so reads/writes consume far more CPU cycles than w/SSD. I expect density to increase but per chip cost to remain relatively steady on a per chip basis so that while your cost per GB will drop your BOM cost will remain comparable and thus dramatically above that of mechanical hdds.
What use would a 256GB NAND cache be in 5 years to anybody? I mean BF4 + add-ons is already ~65GB destiny is of a similar size and the majority of both those installs are patches/DLC. The paradigm of the disc based eco system is what allowed the X360 Arcade to exist, MS technical restriction meant you had to support running off the disc for the first few years of the X360. The modern paradigm of disc + patch or d/l + patch means that the process of swapping games on and off disc would impose ridiculous time costs on the end user as they await both game and patch installation after buying as few as 3 or 4 games (presuming under provisioning for wear levelling and system reserve).
Hey , I'm sorry for some reason I didn't get a notification on this
Anyway
1) 100 GBs because that's how big Bluray 4k is at 3 layers . If a game is 200GB what will they ship it on ? The only option will be flash
2) 2020 will be to long for the generation esp if VR takes off
3) It would depend on what node 3d nand is at
4) $1 ? Whats the cost for that on current flash solutions found in the 3ds and vita ?
For nand it all depends . I just bought a 480 gig drive for $109 bucks that's 23 cents per gig. The 960 gig is $200 so its down to 21 cents.
That also includes costly controllers with dram on them.
128gig flash drive is $20 so that's 16 cents
That's very close to your 11 cent prediction and we still have 5 years to go.
Right now a 256gig drive is $85 . I would believe the 128gig drive has hit its bottom for now. We will see the 256gig drive come down to $20 by the 2017. Putting us at 8 cents a gig.
With the newer flash drives we are talking over a 150MB/s reads.
Are they ? They are two lines on a graph that are starting to move towards each other .
1TB ssd's are down to $200 That's the cost of a 6TB drive. I'm sure they will eventually over lap .
Outside of some plateau and dips, nand price seems to follow a 50% drop every 2 years. It sometimes hold almost the same price for over a year, and drops more the following year, keeping the trend. dramexchange.com seems to support this depending on the type of chip. eMMC for smartphones are more expensive than the flash used in SSDs (but which require a controller).
I bought a 960GB at the PS4 launch for 499 (cad), and the lowest price I found today is $259 (cause of the exchange rate).
The overhead per chip is showing up with the difference between 4GB and 16GB eMMC and NAND contract prices averages. That's my baseline for non-reducible costs, surely there's at least $1 overhead.
eMMC 4GB : 2.42 (60 cents/GB)
eMMC 16GB : 5.02 (31 cents/GB)
NAND 4GB : 1.77 (44 cents/GB)
NAND 16GB : 4.33 (27 cents/GB)
http://www.dramexchange.com/
I bought a 960GB at the PS4 launch for 499 (cad), and the lowest price I found today is $259 (cause of the exchange rate).
The overhead per chip is showing up with the difference between 4GB and 16GB eMMC and NAND contract prices averages. That's my baseline for non-reducible costs, surely there's at least $1 overhead.
eMMC 4GB : 2.42 (60 cents/GB)
eMMC 16GB : 5.02 (31 cents/GB)
NAND 4GB : 1.77 (44 cents/GB)
NAND 16GB : 4.33 (27 cents/GB)
http://www.dramexchange.com/
Price per GB is dropping of that there is no doubt but price per chip is relatively steady, you just keep getting more storage per chip. For a R/W solution you need a controller and you need multiple chips to do the interleaving that reduces the I/O load on any one chip. You'd have the cost of an entire 500GB 7200rpm mechanical drive for the cost of 3 or 4 NAND chips let alone a fully complete SSD + controller
D
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Controllers are coming on in leaps and bounds. I switched to the stupidly thin MacBook earlier this year which comes with an Apple [branded] SSD controller and I/O is bonkers fast even compared to a machine I got two years ago.
I can only tell you what I pay for it after it goes through the manufacturer , packager and reseller. If i'm able to get a 128 gig $20 after so many people have had their hands in the pot then MS or Sony will be able to get it for far less
If i'm able to buy a 960 gig drive for $200 after so many people have had their hands in the pie then MS/ Sony could get it for less
The less is relative though, and might be very small profit margins. $20 to you might be $5 cost or $15 cost. That's why it's better to go to chip pricing sources and get the actual bulk price for a hypothetical game medium.
The volatility of ram and flash is legendary. Building fabs cost tens of billions. If someone all of a sudden wants a huge supply for a distribution media, the demand would make the price go up like crazy. Apple would pay anything to get that supply in case of shortage (because huge profit margin on iphones). We have seen big spikes before, we have seen drops that made the smaller memory producers go bankrupt, and we have seen price fixing schemes among them that ended up with a slap on the wrist.
I bought an OCZ drive a few years ago because they were the least expensive... OCZ had exited the ram business to focus exclusively on SSD, and a few years later they went bankrupt, they had 5 years of loss in a row, which means they spent years selling at a loss, which means the price I paid wasn't representative of how much they cost to make.
Discs are stable in cost, just put a dozen singulus presses in a small warehouse, and voila you get a capacity increase of 10 millions discs per month. There is no volatility, the cost goes down to cents per disc as soon as the tech is mature, it will never go up, the cost will drop predictably regardless of demand. Supply/demand adjusts quickly with little losses or investment. The blank is a piece of plastic, the replication is just hitting it with a glass stamper, spraying a reflective layer, an image, and a protection against scratches.
I believe that, if 64GB was enough, it would be possible to go flash next gen, for a higher media expense and major replication issues to solve. I'd see Vita-2 with up to 64GB carts and a VR headset. For a home console it's easier to use local storage (necessary anyway for DD games which is predicted to be 50% of sales) along with 300GB, or even 500GB media that would require only a piece of plastic if they go with a rom version of the archival disc. I think sony's latest tech using a double sided disc with two heads reading in parallel would be overkill, but it's a fun way to double capacity an speed.
This is why I doubt 100GB will be enough for a 4k console. These are end-of-gen sizes for PS3, and first year games for PS4.
I bought an OCZ drive a few years ago because they were the least expensive... OCZ had exited the ram business to focus exclusively on SSD, and a few years later they went bankrupt, they had 5 years of loss in a row, which means they spent years selling at a loss, which means the price I paid wasn't representative of how much they cost to make.
Discs are stable in cost, just put a dozen singulus presses in a small warehouse, and voila you get a capacity increase of 10 millions discs per month. There is no volatility, the cost goes down to cents per disc as soon as the tech is mature, it will never go up, the cost will drop predictably regardless of demand. Supply/demand adjusts quickly with little losses or investment. The blank is a piece of plastic, the replication is just hitting it with a glass stamper, spraying a reflective layer, an image, and a protection against scratches.
I believe that, if 64GB was enough, it would be possible to go flash next gen, for a higher media expense and major replication issues to solve. I'd see Vita-2 with up to 64GB carts and a VR headset. For a home console it's easier to use local storage (necessary anyway for DD games which is predicted to be 50% of sales) along with 300GB, or even 500GB media that would require only a piece of plastic if they go with a rom version of the archival disc. I think sony's latest tech using a double sided disc with two heads reading in parallel would be overkill, but it's a fun way to double capacity an speed.
This is why I doubt 100GB will be enough for a 4k console. These are end-of-gen sizes for PS3, and first year games for PS4.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
Cheapest price I've seen recently (2 days ago) was 199 USD for a 960 GB SSD (Sandisk Ultra II) which isn't exactly a budget brand. It would not surprise me if after Christmas sales have some 960 GB - 1 TB drives even cheaper than that, especially for the budget brands. Or EOL drives.
That's still about 3.5x as much as a 3.5" mechanical HDD or about 2-2.5x as much as a 2.5" mechanical HDD, but it's a significant improvement over where it was 6 months ago.
128 GB thumb drives are approaching 20 USD. Granted write speeds are generally anemic on the lower priced drives, but read speeds and access latency isn't so bad. 120 GB SSD drives could be had for 30-35 USD last week as well. Which is cheaper than you can buy a mechanical HDD of any capacity. And 60 GB SSDs are around 20-25 USD.
It's entirely possible that within 3 years SSDs might be similar in price to 2.5" mechanical HDDs.
Regards,
SB
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Either way the prices are still cheaper than the source Mr Fox is giving.
Write speeds aren't important for a bluray replacement since the drives in consoles have zero write capability.
Read speeds are far faster than optical and seek times will also be much better
The volatility of ram and flash is legendary. Building fabs cost tens of billions. If someone all of a sudden wants a huge supply for a distribution media, the demand would make the price go up like crazy. Apple would pay anything to get that supply in case of shortage (because huge profit margin on iphones). We have seen big spikes before, we have seen drops that made the smaller memory producers go bankrupt, and we have seen price fixing schemes among them that ended up with a slap on the wrist.
I bought an OCZ drive a few years ago because they were the least expensive... OCZ had exited the ram business to focus exclusively on SSD, and a few years later they went bankrupt, they had 5 years of loss in a row, which means they spent years selling at a loss, which means the price I paid wasn't representative of how much they cost to make.
Discs are stable in cost, just put a dozen singulus presses in a small warehouse, and voila you get a capacity increase of 10 millions discs per month. There is no volatility, the cost goes down to cents per disc as soon as the tech is mature, it will never go up, the cost will drop predictably regardless of demand. Supply/demand adjusts quickly with little losses or investment. The blank is a piece of plastic, the replication is just hitting it with a glass stamper, spraying a reflective layer, an image, and a protection against scratches.
I believe that, if 64GB was enough, it would be possible to go flash next gen, for a higher media expense and major replication issues to solve. I'd see Vita-2 with up to 64GB carts and a VR headset. For a home console it's easier to use local storage (necessary anyway for DD games which is predicted to be 50% of sales) along with 300GB, or even 500GB media that would require only a piece of plastic if they go with a rom version of the archival disc. I think sony's latest tech using a double sided disc with two heads reading in parallel would be overkill, but it's a fun way to double capacity an speed.
This is why I doubt 100GB will be enough for a 4k console. These are end-of-gen sizes for PS3, and first year games for PS4.
OCZ is a poor example since they were plagued with tons of defective and poor performing parts. People started avoding them like the plague.
Either way a company can join a nand alliance and build their own fabs or finance them. The xbox 360 just turned 10 years old and its stil lbeing sold. So an investment into a fab would be a worth while investment.
I can definitely be off by a factor of two, but not by a factor of ten. I still follow the dramexchange contract prices, and the BOM analysis of IHS. There's no doubt the price of NAND is volatile.
This happens once in a while:
http://www.alphr.com/news/253179/flash-memory-prices-doubled-in-2009
"big cutbacks in flash memory production bring balance back to an industry stung by oversupply. The cost of flash memory has risen to more than $2 (£1.28) per gigabyte."
I.e. they want to control the supply to keep the prices high. This was considered a very good news for flash producers.
That's a great argument for using flash as an internal storage, but the PS4 proved it's not a problem for a distribution media. The speed/seek argument was nullified this gen. It will still need a lot of local storage for DD (even more so next gen), some amount will be used as install cache, just like the PS4. Progressive install also solved the other problem of waiting for the install.
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Okay, here's another source of projections from semi.org, it projects to 2025.
(it also has some really interesting figures other than nand, like the insane holding strength of 28nm)
http://www.semi.org/en/node/57416
128GB carts blanks : $7.68
256GB carts blanks : $15.36
That's before security/packaging, and replication costs.
(it also has some really interesting figures other than nand, like the insane holding strength of 28nm)
http://www.semi.org/en/node/57416
That means even with 128 layers (in 2025):
128GB carts blanks : $7.68
256GB carts blanks : $15.36
That's before security/packaging, and replication costs.
That's also assuming the scaling barriers to manufacturing and using that many layers allow for the projected growth to be hit.
The proposed methods for correctly building and compensating for the increasingly poor electrical performance of those vertical channels are getting pretty exotic, with lasers and new materials only being demonstrated in experiments with planar or low layer counts so far.
The proposed methods for correctly building and compensating for the increasingly poor electrical performance of those vertical channels are getting pretty exotic, with lasers and new materials only being demonstrated in experiments with planar or low layer counts so far.
Great chart, pretty much makes my point SD cards could be ok for mobile/handheld games to ps360 size of games. For that type of siwe one could say that Download is a better option for delivery. Then you need storage and to enforce "artificial" restrictions on games (and patches) sizes.
Overall to reach a low price for a system, passing on either an eMMC of relevant size, a HDD or a SSD is a good start.
I find SD Cards really tempting myself but it is not a match to hardcore and higher end gaming.
Look , I watched the sales on a 128 gig thumb drives , $20 was the bottom price for them and they have dipped to that a few times. $20 /128 = 0.15625 .
I just bought a 960 gig ssd for $200 , I posted the deal in the computer side of these forums for others. $200/960 = 0.2083
Those are the prices and as I said those are after amazon and sand disk and whoever gets profits and after all the packaging and shipping is taken into account.
The PS4 still requires an expensive optical solution at $30-$40 and an expensive 2.5inch hardrive at $30-$40. The hardrive solution will only offer at best similar speeds to the flash stick .
Also listening to the latest bombcast it doesn't sound like progressive install is that great. They've talked about loading into Aliens and none of the ai working or loading into phatom pain and just running around in a non game enviorment and various other issues.
IT would be very different than getting a thumb drive and plugging it into the front of the console and just playing a game in seconds. Not to mention that $60 to $80 worth of hardware could go back into the apu/ram what not and produce a better gaming system and also the size of consoles would greatly reduce
