How PC NAND will undermine DRAM?

DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "How PC NAND Will Undermine DRAM" report to its offering.

DRAM growth has been driven by PC sales since the early 1980s, but that is about to end. Benchmarks prove that NAND flash yields more speed per dollar than DRAM. This study explains how NAND will displace DRAM in PCs, leading to a steady decline in DRAM revenues for the foreseeable future.

This report explores the performance of NAND flash versus DRAM in PCs as measured by industry standard benchmarks and finds that NAND flash provides more performance per dollar spent than does DRAM. This somewhat surprising result leads to Objective Analysis' natural conclusion that DRAM's position in the PC is threatened by NAND, and that changes that will undermine the DRAM market will start to evolve in the near term, forcing the DRAM market toward a foundry model over the longer term.

Key findings:
* NAND flash already brings a greater performance boost per dollar to the PC than does DRAM.
* This has been verified through an exhaustive series of 288 benchmarks performed by Objective Analysis that are detailed in this report.
* The price gap between NAND and DRAM is widening, to further amplify the difference.
* The price gap between HDD and NAND varies between 20-40 times and has settled into that ratio for the long term. This will prevent SSDs from displacing HDDs in PCs.
* Existing consumer purchasing patterns will help rather than hinder the adoption of NAND in PCs while it works against SSD adoption.
* DRAM is entering a phase of protracted overcapacity that will last from late 2011 well beyond the term of the forecast (2016).
* By 2016, $10 billion in annual DRAM revenues will have been lost to this phenomenon.
* The resulting growth in NAND revenues, totaling $1.6 billion in 2016, will not appreciably offset the decline in DRAM revenues.
* Between the market's revenue declines and the growing costs of installing new production capacity DRAM vendor consolidation will accelerate, pushing this market to a foundry model by 2020.