Solid-state drives and memory cards will be harder to buy

Nov 2, 2012 12:25 GMT  ·  By

NAND Flash memory chips seemed to imitate DRAM (dynamic random access memory) for a few months, but they are back in form, with prices steadily rising. This much, DRAMeXchange was able to determine.

Despite general hopes that solid-state drives would keep getting cheaper, the memory segment isn't doing them any favors.

While SSD makers might be able to drive prices lower through engineering breakthroughs and specific chip selections, they won't be able to rely on the chip manufacturing supply chain in that endeavor.

Prices started to rise in September (2012), and they have continued to do so in October as well.

64 Gb MLC (multi-level cell) NAND chips, for example, sell for 10.6% more than they did before.

All this is owed to the reduction in production capacity and the steady rise in demand, though mostly the former.