Moore's Law and Apple's Flash RAM pre-buy
I wrote yesterday about Apple's recent pre-buying of $1.25 billion worth of flash memory through 2010. The open question is what do you use that much flash memory for?
One factor I didn't mention is that the iPod nano was made possible by the advent of 32 Gbit/4 GByte flash chips. But Moore's Law won't stand still during the period of this deal. Current belief is that we'll see 128 Gbit/32 GByte chips by the end of 2007, and one more doubling before 2010 to 512 Gbit/128 GByte chips. So think about the following form factors available at the beginning of 2008:
One other note: $1.25 billion is about one half the cost of a new semiconductor fabrication factory (a fab, as they are called). And this is being paid for in advance. So one can easily imagine that Apple might be asking for a unique type of flash RAM part that would give it a special edge. For example, they might be making chips that have hardware support for digital rights management of songs or movies. Or, it might include a SATA disk interface, so that the flash RAM is simply a fully journaled disk cache.
As mentioned yesterday, my low-risk guess without any more data is that this deal is about allowing Apple to create even more stylish and differentiable iPods and laptops. But don't count out the possibility that this is also about allowing Apple to build the all-in-one home theater/HDTV systems and its own IP-based TV network. Flash memory allows Apple to make amazingly thin devices, and nowhere is that going to be a bigger deal than in TV. With flat panel TVs becoming just computers with very large displays, this deal could presage a very different consumer electronics market in which Apple has already locked in a lot of the needed parts supply.
One factor I didn't mention is that the iPod nano was made possible by the advent of 32 Gbit/4 GByte flash chips. But Moore's Law won't stand still during the period of this deal. Current belief is that we'll see 128 Gbit/32 GByte chips by the end of 2007, and one more doubling before 2010 to 512 Gbit/128 GByte chips. So think about the following form factors available at the beginning of 2008:
- A nano-sized device with 32 GBytes. This is literally one chip of memory.
- A PDA-sized device with 256 GBytes of non-volative storage. This is a gang of 8 chips.
- A laptop-sized device with about 1024 GBytes (1 TByte) of solid-state storage.. The larger form factor allows us to pack in 32 chips.
One other note: $1.25 billion is about one half the cost of a new semiconductor fabrication factory (a fab, as they are called). And this is being paid for in advance. So one can easily imagine that Apple might be asking for a unique type of flash RAM part that would give it a special edge. For example, they might be making chips that have hardware support for digital rights management of songs or movies. Or, it might include a SATA disk interface, so that the flash RAM is simply a fully journaled disk cache.
As mentioned yesterday, my low-risk guess without any more data is that this deal is about allowing Apple to create even more stylish and differentiable iPods and laptops. But don't count out the possibility that this is also about allowing Apple to build the all-in-one home theater/HDTV systems and its own IP-based TV network. Flash memory allows Apple to make amazingly thin devices, and nowhere is that going to be a bigger deal than in TV. With flat panel TVs becoming just computers with very large displays, this deal could presage a very different consumer electronics market in which Apple has already locked in a lot of the needed parts supply.
Technorati Tags: Samsung, Semiconductors, Business, Intel, Apple, iPod, Flash, Gaming
posted by Carl Howe at
12:37 PM
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