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To: Joe NYC who wrote (31368)	3/30/1999 12:57:00 AM
From: kash johal	Respond to of 33344

Josef, Re: Flash prices I think the magic number is $1/mbyte. I believe that later this year we will hit that. Frankly one could do quite a bit with a CE type of system and 40-50Mb of removable flash type of storage. By placing the commons apps in ROM- one can have a usefull system in the $200 range by year end. Regards, Kash.

To: Joe NYC who wrote (31368)	3/30/1999 3:54:00 AM
From: Craig Freeman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33344

Jozef, I hold some SanDisk shares so I try to keep up on flash. Word on the street confirms Kash's statement that $1/MB is the year-end target. But there are several problems with using flash in PCs: 1) Limited life -- after so many reads and writes it wears out. It may be tens or hundreds of thousands of times but it is definitely limited. 2) Flash is very slow in computer terms. Transfer rates in the sub-MBS range are typical. There are exceptions but not at $1/MB target price. If MiniCD and MicroDrive technology get cheap enough, they might be the ultimate answer for the "appliance" world. The ability to upload a "personality" from a $2 MiniCD to RAM at power-on is hard to beat. IMHO, hard drives will continue to be be cheaper than silicon for many years to come. Craig

To: Joe NYC who wrote (31368)	3/30/1999 12:39:00 PM
From: Saturn V	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33344

< I wonder if there is hard disk equivalent of Moore's law, and how it compares with semiconductor one (faster or slower?). I would really like the semiconductors to catch up.> The semiconductor memory and the hard disk drive industry have been in a parallel price fall for the last thirty years. The disk industry has benefited from and the steady fall in the price and improved performance of the support electronics, and has also benefited from improvements in lithography.[ In early 80's I spent $20,000 for a 10MB hard disk for a PDP-11 computer !] I guess you could say Moore's Law also applies to hard disk drives.Unforntunately the seek time of hard disks has not improved dramatically.