Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/03/05/ipad_flash_grab/

iPad to feast on Flash...

...starving SSDs of storage

By Tony Smith

Posted in Personal Tech, 5th March 2010 11:21 GMT

Doomsayers are predicting that Apple's iPad will hinder the adoption of SSDs in PCs.

The argument, made by unnamed sources cited by DigiTimes, goes something like this: the iPad will suck up supplies of Nand Flash chips through 2010, that will encourage suppliers to up the price of whatever is left over, limiting the storage technology's availability to SSD makers.

Cost is, of course, part of the problem, but another key limitation on SSD adoption is storage capacity, particularly when compared to what today's HDDs can deliver. No amount of iPad sales are going to change that.

Price and capacity concerns - too high, too low - will be addressed when 20nm Flash chips become readily available, the moles maintain, but that won't happen until 2011. By which time, mobile HDDs will be nudging past 1TB and desktop HDDs will be even more capacious still. ®