[magila]

> there's every reason to expect the PPU of SSD's to continue trending downward

Not really. The big driver for cost reduction in SSDs was process shrinks, but the latest processes are actually more expensive per-transistor than older ones so that ship has more-or-less sailed. You've got 3D NAND but that's even more expensive to manufacture so the cost savings are marginal at best. It remains to be seen if XPoint will lead to big savings.

In the short term SSD prices have actually been trending up due to a shortage of NAND flash.

[mathgeek]

To my point, this is still the same argument that has been made time and time again with regards to storage. Short term upticks are easy to see in historical SSD pricing, even when looking at the longterm trend.

Source: http://www.jcmit.com/mem2015.htm

[magila]

If you think this is the same you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the industry. Moore's Law as we know it is dead, shrinking the node size isn't cutting costs like it used to. A lot of people are still in denial over this, but it's going to have major repercussions in the IC industry.

[mathgeek]

I'm not referencing Moore's Law at all, nor am I hinging my argument on a single piece of input. I'm simply using decades of historical data to claim that it's more likely to continue downward than upward. Would you mind providing some data points that explicitly or implicitly predict an upward trend over the next 5-10 years?

[magila]

I wouldn't go so far as to predict a long term upward trend, but prices are not going to continue their historic exponential drop. Like I said, cost reduction achieved by shrinking the node size (i.e. Moore's Law) was the main enabler for the exponential drop, but that trend has ended. This is common knowledge for anyone who follows the semiconductor industry, if you want data look it up yourself. Prices will surely still drop, but only incrementally. In particular, the PPU of SSDs will not be competitive with HDDs for the foreseeable future.

[mathgeek]

Ah, you're not talking about what I'm talking about. That's the issue here. I'm not predicting "historic exponential drop" at all. Glad we can agree that prices will still drop.