Hello Art,
you write : "My own investment strategy has been based on the assumption that the current price of SNDK is too low, given the high proportion of cash and marketable securities in its book value per share, and given the likelihood that SNDK will remain the low cost producer in both TLC and 3D. My view is based in part on the difference in gross margins between those achieved by Micron and those of SNDK. I don't know what the Samsung gross margins are, since the company doesn't give much detail, but I suspect that SanDisk's 48-layer 3D will be competitive with Samsung's 32-layer chips."
Frankly, with what is known currently about 3D Nand from Sandisk and others, I fail to see how Sandisk solution is likely to best/equal any other solution. To me, it is just "hope" or "educated guess" if you take into account their planar superiority.
Wrt technology, Samsung is shipping its 48-layer V-NAND solution within a week :
This leads us to suspect that this is the latest generation TLC V-NAND. An external device like the T3 would allow Samsung to first ship the flash in a low-volume, high-profit part, and then ramp it up for consumer SSDs.There is also less concern about performance and endurance compared to the requirements in internal SSDs. Samsung had also talked about 256 Gb 48-layer TLC V-NAND mass production at FMS last August, and the flash packages in T3 look most likely to be based on that. UPDATE: Samsung confirmed that the NAND used in the Portable SSD T3 is indeed 48-layer 256 Gb TLC V-NAND. anandtech.com
amazon.com
I'm not saying that Sandisk will have more expensive 3D NAND bits but I sure feel muuuuuch less comfortable than when it was just about moving to a smaller litho... |
