Popularity of high-capacity SSDs increases thanks to lower NAND prices and QLC developments

High-capacity solid-state disks are rapidly gaining popularity thanks to falling NAND flash-memory prices. Also, quad-level cell (QLC) NAND flash is expected to contribute to the adoption of high-capacity SSDs. Market observers expect that QLC 3D NAND will enable commercialization of consumer SSDs in capacities of 1TB and more.

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Volume production of QLC based SSDs should start this year. Samsung recently announced the availability of its first QLC 3D NAND memory based SSDs for consumers. Intel and Micron, who develop QLC 3D NAND together, also announced QLC 3D NAND technology earlier this year, but mainly for data center and enterprise usage.

At about the same time, Toshiba also announced its QLC 3D NAND memory developments, the company is currently shipping samples to the first SSD vendors. SK Hynix announced its QLC 3D NAND, marketed as “4-dimensional NAND”, three days ago and the company expects to ship the first samples in the second half of next year.

Prices of NAND flash memory are expected to continue to fall in the second half of this year because of the large output of NAND flash memory vendors and the weaker-than-expected demand from smartphones manufacturers.

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DRAMeXchange expects that there will a 10% sequential fall in NAND flash memory chips in both the third and fourth quarter of this year.

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