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by mozumder
3963 days ago
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unfortunately, SSDs are going to be more expensive for the foreseeable future, and part of that is because the material costs are much higher. We need to make sure that everyone understands why, and part of that is because we're using lots of silicon crystals, which have the same lattice structure as diamonds, which are going to be more expensive than aluminum platters. If you take it to the limit, an SSD won't be cheaper than hard drives even as processing costs go down, because they use so much silicon. You say the silicon costs are insignificant, but it will be a limit as prices go down. The diamond analogy works appropriately, and it's unhelpful and inappropriate to claim material costs are insignificant. And people are always going to end up using as much space as given, so that's another mistake you're making. They will find ways, especially given high-res smartphones everywhere with cameras. |
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I used to be certain of that, based on my personal space usage habits. Based on my ongoing survey of both technical and non-technical computer users, I no longer believe that to be true.
The rise of The Cloud(TM) means that there are shockingly few users who intentionally keep a local copy of their data. Media streaming and synced storage means that a wide swath of the computer-using population store that shit remotely and throw away data when The Cloud(TM) gets full.
> ...it's unhelpful and inappropriate to claim [silicon wafer] costs are insignificant.
When the analysis demonstrates that the costs are an insignificant fraction of the total cost, then it is entirely appropriate to make that claim. :)
Silicon wafers may well remain more expensive than harddrive platters. The price of silicon wafers may well mean that SSDs will never reach price parity with HDDs. These facts don't magically make $0.25 per chip a significant factor in the manufacturing cost of a product that also required substantial original research and development to come to market. :)