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Flash vs DRAM Price Projections - for SSD Buyers
1.0" / 2.5" / 3.5" industrial flash SSDs from Hagiwara Sys-Com	by Jim Handy, Objective Analysis ................................
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	Editor's intro:- In the first half of 2007 the difference in user price between a RAM versus flash rackmount SSD was about 45 to 1. A year later in the first half of 2008 that ratio had changed to 25 to 1. (source STORAGEsearch.com) Rackmount SSDs are big ticket investments for users. And in choosing between the 2 technologies knowing what's going to happen to the price gap is an important thing to know. Memory is one of the big factors which determines an SSD's price. Is that memory price gap going to close? Or widen? Parts of this article first appeared in the meta article RAM versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?

The Changing Relationship of Flash & DRAM SSDs - by Jim Handy, Objective Analysis It does us a disservice to compare SSDs made with DRAM and NAND in today's light and to assume that this is the way things will always be. The greatest cost component of any SSD is its memory. Flash SSDs use NAND, and RAM SSDs use DRAM. NAND has been on a steeper price decline than DRAM for its entire existence. The price of a gigabyte of DRAM declines (on average) 32% per year. There are indications that this decline may slow. Meanwhile, NAND's price per gigabyte declines faster, at an average of 50% per year. While NAND used to be more costly than DRAM, in 2004 it crossed below DRAM. Today a gigabyte of NAND costs less than 1/3rd as much as a gigabyte of DRAM and the gap between the two is growing.

Large system makers, those most likely to use RAM SSDs, want to balance resources in their systems to get the greatest performance per dollar, and they are very likely to use three forms of mass storage in their systems: RAM, flash, and conventional HDD. Today, with the 3:1 price difference between NAND and DRAM it makes sense to use a certain amount of both technologies, but those amounts greatly depend upon the system's task. By the end of 2012, when a gigabyte of NAND costs 1/19th as much as a gigabyte of DRAM, the optimum balance of flash/RAM will be very different. System analysts and IT managers need to understand how their systems use disk storage in order to optimize their balance of flash to RAM. These users should perform their benchmarks in such a way that they can ride the downward trends in both RAM and flash pricing to get the highest performance for the lowest cost, taking advantage of the growing price delta between the two technologies.

see also:- SSD news the Fastest SSDs the SSD Buyers Guide the Top 10 SSD OEMs RAM versus Flash SSDs - which is Best? SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Server Apps? Z's Laws - Predicting Future Flash SSD Performance

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