NAND flash prices continue to fall dragging down SSD prices further, which will be driving the adoption of SSDs in enterprise and datacenter applications, according to industry observers.

Prices for high-capacity SSDs have been declining as a result of NAND flash price drops since 2018, said the observers. Controller and device manufacturers are encouraged to promote solutions for enterprise SSDs in capacities of up to 16TB, the observers indicated.

Silicon Motion Technology, for instance, has rolled out its enterprise SSD controller for high-performance SATA SSDs with a maximum capacity of 16TB. The chip is being delivered for sampling with volume shipments expected to kick off in the second half of 2019, the observers continued.

In the client SSD segment, the unit price of 512GB SSDs has slid to that of 256GB SSDs during the same period in 2018 encouraging end-market device vendors to upgrade the storage specs of their products to 512GB, the observers noted.

Meanwhile, upstream chipmakers have improved their 64-layer 3D NAND production yield rates to over 90% and are gearing up for transition to 96-layer 3D NAND process technology. Nevertheless, the chip suppliers have moved to slow down capacity expansion as well as the pace of their technology migration to avoid NAND flash prices from falling further, according to the observers. NAND flash prices are approaching cash costs for many manufacturers.