Samsung Electronics expects its NAND flash based SSDs to grab 20% of the desktop PC storage market by 2008, according to a company official during a “Flash Day” event held in Taiwan.

Eyeing growing demand for NAND flash in digital handheld and electronics markets, Samsung has been able to double NAND flash chip densities every year over the past couple of years. With production costs continuing to shrink, customers will be increasingly interested in adopting NAND flash as a substitute for conventional HDDs, the official stated.

Samsung estimates that the 8Gbit and 16Gbit NAND flash market should grow by 2.5 times in 2006 and the company will migrate 70nm single level cell (SLC) production for 8Gbit and 16Gbit flash chips to multi level cell (MLC) production in 2006. In 2007, Samsung will produce 16Gbit flash on MLC on 55nm node, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News report.

Samsung stated that with global desktop PC demand reaching 100 million units, the company  aims to grab 20% of the related storage market with its NAND flash drives. Samsung will boost the density of flash by 3-4 fold over the coming years in order to fulfill the goal and the company plans to debut 32GB NAND flash based HDDs for the desktop PC market.

Although the industry is still conservative about NAND flash based SSDs due to their relatively higher costs, Samsung company president and CEO was quoted in a PC World report as saying that Samsung will start from working on 16GB versions and expand the density to 100GB over the coming years.

HDD maker Seagate Technologies, on the other hand, is bearish about Samsung’s projection that flash will replace other storage technologies, with Rob Pait, director of global consumer electronics marketing at Seagate being quoted in a MacWorld report as stating, “When Samsung said hard disks are dead, I think they were being completely irresponsible, extremely short-sighted and simply weren’t telling the truth.”

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved