From PC World: Intel’s storage czar has a thing or two to say about the future of drive technology, naturally, but it’s not all party line. PCWorld recently sat down with Bill Leszinske, who heads Intel’s NVM (non-volatile memory) Solutions Group, to get his take on interfaces, hard drives vs. solid-state drives, and when storage and RAM will merge.
Much has also been predicted about when SSDs would supplant hard drives, but when you look at a $50, 1TB hard drive versus a $250, 1TB SSD, it doesn’t seem like we’re remotely close. Despite that gap, Leszinske said he believes an inflection point is imminent.
“There are some people who want large drives and will continue to buy them,” Leszinske said. On the other hand, he pointed to research showing that the vast majority of people use less than 40 percent of their drive’s capacity.
Hard drives will continue to be cheaper per GB than SSDs, but Leszinske thinks SSD prices will fall enough to convert more people. “When you can get a 256GB SSD that costs the same as a hard drive, call that $40-ish U.S. dollars, I think it’s done.”
Even more aggressive is Leszinske’s belief that SATA SSDs will soon be passe. He believes most consumers building or buying desktops will soon move to PCIe-based drives. Leszinske predicted the price barrier would fall quickly. “As we head into the later parts of 2017, PCIe and SATA pricing get much closer,” he said.
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