SEC spearheads new memory chip market

SEC spearheads new memory chip market

This year will mark the opening of an era when NAND flash chips, a type of flash memory chip, will begin to be used as the auxiliary memory of computers. The 256 gigabyte solid state drive (256 GB SSD) that Samsung Electronics unveiled on Monday will usher in the era. Thus far, hard disk drives have been the standard as the auxiliary memory of computers, but large capacity SSD has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in the IT product market. Among other shortfalls, HDD is noisy, and vulnerable to shocks, and consumes a lot of energy; but it has been widely used as the main auxiliary memory of computers because it boasts large storage capacity. SSD is lighter and consumers less energy than HDD, and thus is highly regarded as a next-generation memory device, with one drawback being its limited storage capacity. SEC developed the SSD for the first time in March 2006, and a 128 GB SSD early this year, before developing the 256 GB SSD, which effectively doubled the storage capacity of its predecessor in a matter of only four months.The outlook for the SSD market is very bright. According to I-Supply, a semiconductor market survey firm, the global SSD market will see a nine-fold increase in value from $300 million this year to $2.7 billion next year. The market is expected to expand by an annual average of 124 percent toward 2012. The development of the large capacity SSD is surely welcome news, but the problem is its hefty price. The SSD being produced with current technology is nearly 10 times as expensive as an HDD, and thus cannot generate adequate demand for mass production. However, it did not take a long time before large-sized mobile phones advanced to become cutting-edge gadgets. Likewise, if SEC steps up efforts to develop better technology, our dream of reducing PC sizes will become a reality. We have high expectations for heightened efforts by SEC.

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