NAND Flash market and prices explained

I can't see prices for SSD's coming back down to their summer levels until the end of next year at the earliest.

What's worrying me at the moment is how sustainable that price drops are going to be for SSD's, from what i've been reading moving from 2 bit per cell to 3 or even 4 bit per cell isn't going to do any good because the cells 'wear out' much quicker meaning less erase cycles (tolerances are much lower when you've got to try and differentiate between 8 or 16 voltage levels as opposed to 4 - similar to how MLC only 'lasts' 10000 cycles to SLC's 100000)
The other big spanner in the works is that moving to a smaller process just magnifies these problems, from what i've read the current 32nm MLC NAND is only good for around 3000 cycles, as opposed to 10000 cycles for the 50nm stuff.

If the above is true, I can't see us ever breaking the £1/GB barrier on any halfway decent SSD - anything that can bring the prices down is going to kill lifespans.
We really need a proper competing tech to emerge, atm PRAM (Phase Change RAM) looks the most promising.
 
This is about higher prices due to the shortage of Nand though. If the market was operating normaly we wouldn't have these increasing prices.

If fact it production was free to meet demand they would already be a lot cheaper. How soon the prices come down depends on how long it takes the Nand market to sort itself out.
 
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