Aus,
I don't see that mobile phones replacing PC functionality is particularly important for flash, and I'll tell you why below.
First, though, I'm a little curious about your whole mobile phone theory. I feel more like it is a pitch for Qualcomm than Sandisk, but I guess you probably posted it on the Qualcomm thread? :) I've used a few of those phones and some have neat games and additional functionality, but none of my friends ever use them because they are worried about battery life (and, when you come right down to it, the displays hardly support anything visually appealing). People I know seem to use their phones as phones. The Palm Pilots, though, get much better use. I'd vote them the more likely to supplant the PC (as well as the cell phone). I'd go for a PDA with a plug in headset over one of those tiny cell phones any day. . .
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OK, here's a little story. I saw Stephen Lai at a conference many moons ago. He's Intel's flash bigwig (think he still is), and was on a birds-of-a-feather panel at IEDM (or IRPS?) where the topic was "FLASH or DRAM?" All the other people (Toshiba, Micron, AMD, etc) were saying "each has its place, and all will see growth," but Steven Lai was fun: he said, "Flash in everything; DRAM eventually loses" He said it will take some software and architectural work, but that DRAM could entirely be replaced by flash (I immediately liked him because he took a position, which makes panels far more entertaining).
He described some very compelling scenarios, with PCs booting instantly and applications starting up lightning fast when the whole thing was permanently 'installed' in Flash (sort of like OS stored in ROM, but better because you can configure it).
Reliability is always an issue with flash (at least at reliability conferences!), so Lai mentioned that special architectures would have to be developed to essentially rotate the data segments around so that the data portions of code (which get re-written often) would not wear out (quite literally). I think he assumed that the Flash write times could be improved or buffered (in DRAM!) to not be visible.
Another conclusion (shared by all) was that, ultimately, flash takes less space and will eventually be more cost-effective than DRAM. Hard to believe at the time, but the argument was (and still is I assume) that the capacitor used to store charge on a DRAM, as well as the circuitry to control the refresh (as the charge leaks off the capacitor), occupy more space than a same-technology Flash cell {not even including multi-bit flash cells, although you make multi-level DRAM too}. Flash, however, because it does not sell the massive volumes that DRAM does, is always on an older technology, so DRAM keeps the lead (more research money flows into DRAM as well, mostly because it generates more money--and so goes the world).
Anyway, I think his talk was what really got me interested in Flash as a student (plus, Flash is interesting in general).
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Back to your question. Let's say some future Qualcomm superphone puts its non-Windows (I hope) OS on flash, along with all sorts of neat applications. They aren't going to be using SanDisk flash, because SanDisk flash is probably a hell of a lot more expensive. They don't need removable media for that sort of functionality. SanDisk is all about data transfer and memory upgrades (in my mind, at least). I think they'd die a slow death in the commodity flash arena, which is who benefits from all gadgets with flash. Sure, one might extrapolate that the more toys with embedded logic that exist, the more potential that some portion of them will have a slot with CF written on it, but that's all you can do, and I wouldn't invest on that vague notion.
Of course, if flash keeps scaling, who knows. Windows 2007 might come on a CF card (or does Windows bloat faster than flash shrinks?) for immediate installation, replacing the lame 20th-century CD/DVD.
It is the design wins and standardization potential that keep me in SanDisk. The only unknown to me is their patents. I hope they are rock solid, because if there is money to be made here, people are going to chip at it every way they can.
Steve |
