FLASH market collapses

[Jan Panteltje]

Apart from the fact that I can buy an 8GB USB stick here now for < 20Euro,
there are news items that point to an over production of FLASH memory,
and losses for Sandisk for example, and them reducing investment in new
factories to prevent further over production.
So if you need FLASH then you should be able to negotiate a good price.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

For now.

Wait a couple of years and see how easy it'll be.

Yes, that is the eternal cycle, big demand, increase in production,
overproduction, we have seen that with normal memory chips too.
That is why act now, every day is a new situation in business.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Yes, that is the eternal cycle, big demand, increase in production,
overproduction, we have seen that with normal memory chips too.
That is why act now, every day is a new situation in business.

I always wondered... if the cycles are so obvious why don't the chip
manufacturers invest at the right time? I would have thought that now
would be the time to start building fabs.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Apart from the fact that I can buy an 8GB USB stick here now for < 20Euro,
there are news items that point to an over production of FLASH memory,
and losses for Sandisk for example, and them reducing investment in new
factories to prevent further over production.
So if you need FLASH then you should be able to negotiate a good price.

As an aside, why is USB flash so much cheaper than (say) CF?

 

[Frank Buss]

Apart from the fact that I can buy an 8GB USB stick here now for < 20Euro,
there are news items that point to an over production of FLASH memory,
and losses for Sandisk for example, and them reducing investment in new
factories to prevent further over production.
So if you need FLASH then you should be able to negotiate a good price.

I would like to see some more Flash in microcontrollers. I can buy a 1 GB
USB memory stick for less than 10 Euro. This means it should be possible to
add 1 MB for less than 1 Cent to a microcontroller? Would be ok, if I can
access it with lower clocks than the CPU clock, only.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

I always wondered... if the cycles are so obvious why don't the chip
manufacturers invest at the right time? I would have thought that now
would be the time to start building fabs.

Greed

 

[Jan Panteltje]

I would like to see some more Flash in microcontrollers. I can buy a 1 GB
USB memory stick for less than 10 Euro. This means it should be possible to
add 1 MB for less than 1 Cent to a microcontroller? Would be ok, if I can
access it with lower clocks than the CPU clock, only.

How about SDcards?
The interface is simpler, but IIRC you need to be a member of their club,
if yopu want to use it commercially, expensive:
http://www.norrod.nl/ws_a_index.asp?hoofdgroep_id=11&sel=86&helelijst=1
I use an SDcard here in my Linksys as a web server:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/wap54g/index.html#wapserver

 

[[email protected]]

I always wondered... if the cycles are so obvious why don't the chip
manufacturers invest at the right time? I would have thought that now
would be the time to start building fabs.

<#include std_joke_about_negative_feedback>

;-)

Michael

 

[Frank Buss]

How about SDcards?
The interface is simpler, but IIRC you need to be a member of their club,
if yopu want to use it commercially, expensive:

For external memory this is a good idea. But would be nice to have some
more Flash integrated in microcontrollers.

I don't understand why Flash is so expensive in microcontrollers. E.g. a
MSP430F1101 with 1k costs $2.48 and a MSP430F1111 with 2k costs $3.04. This
is $560 per MB, compared to $0.01 per MB with Flash on USB memory sticks.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

For external memory this is a good idea. But would be nice to have some
more Flash integrated in microcontrollers.

I don't understand why Flash is so expensive in microcontrollers. E.g. a
MSP430F1101 with 1k costs $2.48 and a MSP430F1111 with 2k costs $3.04. This
is $560 per MB, compared to $0.01 per MB with Flash on USB memory sticks.

Good point, never thought about it that way.
In a PIC, 8k FLASH is a lot to fill, when writing in asm.
I think for C more FLASH is needed.
There is also the memory bus width, 14 bits, 16 bits, 32 bits, cheap
micro controllers may not be able to address 8GB ?

What I find interesting when we get to >8GB flash is the compare to similar
RW media, say Blu-Ray RW?, if the FLASH USB prices drop further, then these
will be cheaper then an optical disk.
Of course BR-RW optical disks can be produced much cheaper, but with USB
FLASH you do not need a 200 Euro burner, and it works everywhere.

I can fit 3 or more hours high quality digital TV directly from sat on
an 8GB stick, will rotating media completely disappear perhaps?

 

[Joerg]

For external memory this is a good idea. But would be nice to have some
more Flash integrated in microcontrollers.

I don't understand why Flash is so expensive in microcontrollers. E.g. a
MSP430F1101 with 1k costs $2.48 and a MSP430F1111 with 2k costs $3.04. This
is $560 per MB, compared to $0.01 per MB with Flash on USB memory sticks.

I guess it's economies of scale. The number of sold flash chips is
probably orders of magnitude higher than that of the MSP430F1111. Plus
volume per device makes stuff cheaper. Look at rubber for example: A new
rubber washer for a faucet recently cost me $0.65. It only weighs a few
grams. A new tire for my car cost me around $80 yet the rubber in it
weighs thousands of times more.

 

[Tim Williams]

What I find interesting when we get to >8GB flash is the compare to
similar
RW media, say Blu-Ray RW?, if the FLASH USB prices drop further, then
these
will be cheaper then an optical disk.
Of course BR-RW optical disks can be produced much cheaper, but with USB
FLASH you do not need a 200 Euro burner, and it works everywhere.

I can fit 3 or more hours high quality digital TV directly from sat on
an 8GB stick, will rotating media completely disappear perhaps?

Ah, but can you play it full speed?

I can't even play (at full speed) the 640x480 clips my camera produces,
reading off an IDE-USB card reader!

I suppose Flash has better rewritability than CD-RW though...

Tim

 

[Martin Griffith]

Ah, but can you play it full speed?

I can't even play (at full speed) the 640x480 clips my camera produces,
reading off an IDE-USB card reader!

I suppose Flash has better rewritability than CD-RW though...

Tim

This is way kooooooool

http://exilim.casio.com/browse_cameras/exilim_pro/EX-F1/
$999


martin

 

[Eeyore]

For now.

Wait a couple of years and see how easy it'll be.

I haven't seen hard drives getting any more expensive !

Graham

 

[Joerg]

This is way kooooooool

http://exilim.casio.com/browse_cameras/exilim_pro/EX-F1/
$999

This is really cool:

http://www.dubtronic.de/galerie/1280/36/s_004.html

 

[Anssi Saari]

AFAIK the best flash processes don't make good dense logic, and the
good dense logic processes make crappy flash.

Very good. Same reason why embedded DRAM isn't that common.

The again, I'd think some kind of stacked die solution should be
possible at a cheaper price than separate chips... If you could get
volume, that is.

 

[Anssi Saari]

Probably volume. While there may not be a thumb drive for every man,
woman and child in the US (and probably every other developed country
in the world), there's got to be more than one for every 10.

I don't think that CF has such market penetration.

I'd think CF is on its way out with limited demand. Cameras and phones
seem to have gone to micro SDs and they seem to be about the same
price (for 8GB at least) as USB memory sticks.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Ah, but can you play it full speed?

That is easily tested:
Lets grab Andromeda I recorded from ITV4 last night, it is a digital TV transport stream,
not modified in any way.
I will put it from the main PC into a 4GB USB flash.
We do this the Linux way, FYI:
Insert USB stick, test if detected:
dmesg
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda

OK, detected, let's mount it:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
Copy 100MB of Andromeda for test:
dd if=andromeda_x.ts of=/mnt/sda1/test.ts bs=1000000 count=100
Type 'sync' to actually flush it to the USB stick (else it stays in RAM).
sync
This takes a while, flash write is slow...

Unmount the stick:
umount /dev/sda1
Now let's take the USB stick to an other PC, my eeePC, so I can watch Andromeda on the train:

Start eeePC
Open a terminal window with ctrl alt T.
become root
sudo su -
Insert USB stick.
Ignore stupid pop up of auto mount that does not work anyways, mount by hand:
mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1 (yes disk numbering is different here)
Logout as root
ctrl D
Now here we go:
mplayer -vf scale=1200:960 -fs -vop pp=0x20000 -monitoraspect 800:480 -cache 8192 /mnt/sdc1/test.ts
Of course I already had most of this scripted, not sure you need the 'scale', the large cache helps to play fluently.
The '-vop' forces de-interlace, the '-monitoraspect' fits it to the wide screen eeePC display.
The '-fs' means full screen.

The answer to your question is YES, even on a low power low speed processor device as the eeePC.
Plays with no irregularities, sound also OK (is mp2 encoded on sat), aspect OK,
everything fine.
Picture is mpeg2 encoded and yes the eeePC uses hardware acceleration in decoding it (top shows hardly any CPU use).
And this was the cheapo 4GB USB stick.

It also shows how that eeePC can be a great movie player for for example kids in the back of the car.
Much more versatile then those (just as expensive) portable DVD players, you just copy the DVD to the
USB stick on the main PC.
So what I am saying is: Perhaps the time of the rotating media (disks) has come to an end...

I can't even play (at full speed) the 640x480 clips my camera produces,
reading off an IDE-USB card reader!

In case that is .dv, then yes the stream is made up of a series of .jpeg pictures, and used much more bandwidth.
You have to re-code it to H264 perhaps (or mpeg2).
My digital camera records directly into mpeg4 on SDcard, and plays no problem.

I suppose Flash has better rewritability than CD-RW though...

More times, yes.

 

[Tim Williams]

In case that is .dv, then yes the stream is made up of a series of .jpeg
pictures, and used much more bandwidth.
You have to re-code it to H264 perhaps (or mpeg2).

Oh, it saves as .AVI, but some bigass mostly-uncompressed thing. A typical
minute is, well let's see... 38MB for 56 seconds in one case. Just about
40MB/min, which is, well that's around 0.67 MB/s, which is more than enough
for USB to sink, even crappy USB (probably like I have, or cheap thumbdrives
would use..). But then, it occurs to me that AVI isn't a streaming format,
which might be why it's misbehaving. But then but then, it should still be
able to load the whole thing in a few seconds, even while it's playing, even
if AVI isn't streaming. So I don't get it.

Hmm, I'd make reference to the PNY card reader I have ... but it doesn't
exist. Long ago superseded I'm sure. It has a transparent purple front
bezel and beige plastic case, in case that sounds familiar.

Tim

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Oh, it saves as .AVI, but some bigass mostly-uncompressed thing.

AVI is a 'container' format, it can contain many things (formats).

A typical
minute is, well let's see... 38MB for 56 seconds in one case. Just about
40MB/min, which is, well that's around 0.67 MB/s, which is more than enough
for USB to sink, even crappy USB (probably like I have, or cheap thumbdrives
would use..).

There is however USB1 and USB2,
USB2 is faster, no tsure if USB1 can do 670kbps.

This is what I get for USB1 with the 4GB stick:
grml: ~ # hdparm -t /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
Timing buffered disk reads: 4 MB in 4.51 seconds = 907.28 kB/sec

This is what I get when connected to USB2 (same USB stick):
eeepc-unknown:/root> ./hdparm -t /dev/sdc1
/dev/sdc1:
Timing buffered disk reads: 82 MB in 3.02 seconds = 27.18 MB/sec
As you can see there is a _HUGE_ difference in speed.

(
The avid reader and eeePC owner will notice there is no hdparm on the eeePC,
well you can find all those magical binaries here:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/eeepc/
)

Maybe you have an old PC with USB1, or an old card reader with USB1 support only, or both?