"Why are solid state drives so much more expensive than mechanical hard drives?"
Indeed, the author, who has been dealing with hard disks, has never thought about this question. Why is solid-state disk more expensive than mechanical hard disks?
After careful consideration, I think that there are three main reasons, leading to the SSD is more expensive than the mechanical hard disk, of course, these reasons are only the author's opinion, if you have different views, welcome.
One of the reasons is that the hardware material is different, and the difference in procurement cost is the main driving force to distinguish the two prices.
As we all know, although the SSD drive and mechanical drive, are referred to as "hard", both from the working principle, the core of medium, and even the packaging process, and other dimensions, there is different to other, this will lead to the same is hard disk, the core of the procurement control, hardware material and variety, there are totally different cost range.
Mechanical hard disk internal mechanical structure procurement cost is low
For a simple example, the same storage media, mechanical disk mainly mechanical disk, integration and processing difficulty, relatively low, so the unit cost also decreased; And SSD storage medium in NAND flash memory particles is given priority to, whether in the manufacturing process and integration, are far more than machinery in the era of disk products, although nowadays as stacked QLC, and even the emergence of PLC, a flash particles manufacturing costs fall further, can be compared with disk products, procurement cost is still high.
Solid state disk hardware with high integration is more expensive to purchase
This is only the storage media, and such as the SSD PCB mold cost, the purchase cost of the main control chip and so on, in terms of the hardware itself, the cost of SSD is far higher than the mechanical hard disk.
For another, a variety of technical agreement licensing fees, and mechanical drive only need to the authorization of SATA interface, contemporary solid-state drives, want to play to the storage performance to the extreme, to meet the demand of technical agreement and the design of the interface specification, and these protocol specification, often need to pay a certain amount of licensing fees, although the cost is not large, But it still needs to be spread out into manufacturing and ex-factory costs.
Various protocols
The NVMe transfer protocol authorization, the PCIe interface permission use, and the custom research and development of the master control function are all hidden costs.
The third reason, which is also the most worth pondering, is that solid state disk as a new product, before the formation of scale effect, will inevitably experience high cost, difficult to popularize the law.
Reviewed the development of solid state drives, when the particle of s, SLC as mainstream flash SSD is almost equal to the price of a computer, but still could not stop the user, the rigid demand for faster memory, so the MLC/TLC/QLC, speeding up the SSD from luxury to the popularity of consumer goods, who has ever been on the shelf of the solid-state drives, It began to enter thousands of households and became a mechanical hard disk that can be directly passed down for decades. It talked about factory cost and purchase price.
Different types of flash memory particles
Isn't that what solid state drives have been doing for years?
In two dimensions, performance and price, qi force in promoting the performance continuously leap at the same time, the use of economies of scale, continuously reduce the cost of the factory from the market present situation is concerned, SSD is already half success, the current affordable SATA solid-state drives, unit GB storage capacity for 5-8 cents, although the contrast of mechanical drive, no significant price advantage.
But the trend of The Times tells us that advanced productivity will eventually knock down everything that hinders progress, in three years at least, in five years at most, the era of solid state disk hegemony is coming.