Hi Steve,
Based on what is available out there, the 1GB flash drive must be made out of 8x128MB(1Gbit chips) from Samsung, of course, 90nm technology. But this leadership is not going to last for too long, because with Sandisk's new chips out beginning July 1st, Sandisk will be the size leader, in terms of "smallness" physically and "largeness" in terms of Bytes and Bits.
In general, SBC chips at the same nanometers are faster than MLC chips at the same nanometers but of late Sandisk has made some changes to page size that they write at a time (changes to the controller for the flash memory cards and drives) and their MLC chips speed should be comparable to equivalent SBC chips if not faster in some cases.
So far, Samsung has stayed away from MLC and this puts them at a cost disadvantage if someone like Sandisk manufactures MLC using the same NM technology. Put simply, the size of the new monolithic 2Gbit MLC chip from Sandisk is about the same as 1Gbit SBC chip from Samsung. What this means is that from the same 300mm wafer, Sandisk will roughly yield twice as many Mbits as Samsung can and that gives a tremendous cost advantage (almost half) to Sandisk/Toshiba.
Until Samsung decides to move to MLC, they will always have to be ahead by one process generation to be at par in terms of cost structure of the o/p with Sandisk. This means if Samsung goes to 70nm they can compete with 90nm MLC Sandisk chips (the size of the chips would be almost similar and hence yield the same number of chips from same size wafers). But keep in mind, Sandisk will have to take a nap to be left behind. As long as they keep on progressing towards the latest technology with MLC they will be ahead. In my judgement next several q's they are ahead.
As for those 16 vendors, let me assure you a lot of the players will leave the market when Sandisk starts shipping flash drives from the latest 512MB MLC chips based on 90nm technology. It is not unusual to have 8 memory chips in a jump drive and that can give you 4GB without physically increasing the size of the jump drive that we are seeing in the market today! Even if Samsung decided to compete with Sandisk they won't be able to. Of course, things are not going to remain like this for ever. Someone down the road will make faster progress and catch-up with Sandisk or even move ahead.
I believe, FLSH pioneered Jump drives. They might be getting a cut from the controller but not sure about this. FLSH/Toshiba has some arrangement. Not sure what the deal is between Sandisk and FLSH either. Some others might be able to clarify on this.
Sandisk didn't see the need to join this alliance because as per Eli (don't remember where he said this) this didn't buy them anything. They will be the king of Jump drive market in the coming quarters, undoubtedly. Whether they can hold this position for a long time is difficult to predict though because things change every few q's in semiconductor industry.
-Pam
PS: For those who are not too familiar with the convention, 1Byte=8bits, so 1GB (GigaByte)= 8x1Gb (1GigaBit) chips |
