At one time the amount of storage that you could get with flash memory was extremely small. Computers had megabytes if not kilobytes of flash memory for RAM just a little over a decade ago. But now having 16GB or even 32GB of flash storage inside of an SD card or even more with a solid state drive is really common. The average smartphone currently ships with 16GB of flash storage inside. But what will happen in ten or so years, will we have many terabytes of flash storage inside of smartphones?
The answer to that question is yes. By 2024 it’s expected that we’ll see 16TB of flash storage in the average smartphone. That flash storage will be made from 6.5nm TLC NAND flash. The most interesting part out of all of this is the fact that with current flash storage technologies we can get to 16TB by 2024 but once we get there it won’t really be very possible to go much further than that. Going smaller than 6.5nm with TLC NAND flash would increase latency and reduce reliability which isn’t what you look for with flash memory.
Chances are we won’t ever reach that 16TB limit with TLC NAND flash since chances are they will be a new type of NAND flash that will be introduced within the next decade. We don’t know when exactly newer flash memory technologies will arrive but for now 16TB sounds like plenty of storage for a single solid state drive.
What are your thoughts on this?
