If Toshiba can put the muscle and fabs behind OCZs innovation to keep them a major player I'm all for it. I really don't want to see the SSD market collapse down to Samsung, Intel, and Micron as the lone players. The more competitors the sooner the 1TB SSDs for under $300 will arrive.
I think this comment alludes to the bigger issue that OCZ doesn't really produce much of what it sells. If you look at the products advertised on their website it mostly comes down to SSDs and power supplies. OCZ is neither a manufacturer of NAND or power supplies in the sense that it purchases these things from other OEMS and rebrands/repackages them.
That speaks volumes for the position that the traditional hard drive vendors like Western Digital or Seagate are in, though, doesn't it? So far, efforts by hard drive companies to break into the SSD market have largely failed, and even if they find some success, they'll always be at a disadvantage having to pay markup on NAND.
It's true that they still have relevance today because the cost per gig of NAND is still high enough that it's not practical for bulk storage, but if NAND passes the tipping point (where it's not necessarily cheaper than hard drives, but simply cheap enough), or if something like MRAM takes over and enables lower costs, then that could be the end of them.
Right now, the least expensive SSDs (such as Samsung's 840 Evo) sell for about 50 cents a gigabyte if you buy a large unit - maybe a little lower if you snag a good holiday deal. Mid-range hard drives are about 5 cents a gigabyte - you'll pay about $150 for a decent 3TB (3000GB) HDD, for example.
So, in order for SSDs to be competitive with mechanical hard drives for mass storage, they have to come down in price by an order of magnitude. That can happen, but it may take another 5 to 10 years.
Cheap enough != as cheap as equivalent HDD capacity. Once NAND is cheap enough that $50-100 will buy enough storage for the average user the consumer HDD market will begin imploding. With current use patterns I'd put the capacity numbers needed at those pricepoints at 120/240gb. Even with users average data usage increasing I suspect we're only 2-4 years away from that point.
HDDs will still be around for a while after that for mass low frequency of access data in the enterprise; but as the high volume consumer market goes away those of us who need terabytes of storage for huge steam accounts, photography, home media servers, etc will end up paying something closer to enterprise costs because the volumes that drive costs down won't be around. Just comparing the prices of basic consumer HDDs to prosumer RAID suitable models suggests we could see an effective doubling of the price per TB; probably in the form of several years when price falls are much smaller than historically normal.
What is interesting is that Corsair is in pretty much the same situation as OCZ but has been doing pretty good.
For SSD's to be viable for mainstream use I think we need 240-256GB drives to hit about $50-75. 120/128 are not enough for regular use since the OS + a few programs/games + few movies/music can fill them up pretty quickly.
The low price for a 128-256GB ssd is 60c per GB today. Average is about 75c for oow end client drives. So we are pretty far from 25c per GB (3-5 years).
Side note ....corsair is not like ocz. ocz died due to fraud and repeated lying about sales. They would have survived and been bought for about 1B if not for that. Oops.
Corsair is a little different, it has a stupidly massive loyal following of enthusiasts who aren't afraid to deck out their PC's with Corsair Speakers, Headphones, Ram, Power Supplies, Keyboards, Mice, Coolers, Fans, SSD's, Flash Drives and Cases. They operate on revenue of about 450+ million a year, mostly targeting pretty much only gamers and enthusiasts.
Plus, they didn't have their brand tarnished by reliability issues. Granted, I'm still happily sitting with an OCZ Vertex 2 64Gb SSD, which has been rock solid for years, but not everyone is so lucky. And when it finally does die, I'll probably jump over to Samsung, but considering it's age and capacity I wouldn't be to worried about it dying right now.
Yeah, the important thing here is that HDDs don't scale down, checking with my local price site the cheapest laptop hard drive you can buy is 320GB and for roughly 50% more you can get a 64GB SSD. Per gigabyte that's still 7.5x the HDD, but you can't buy a 100GB HDD for 1/3rd the price. If for example many business workers with Windowsand Office - no Steam, no video, no photos, no music collection just Word, Excel, Powerpoint and some business-specific apps. I remote in to a virtual machine at work, it's just 40GB yet has all the tools I need. In that case I'd prefer a laptop with a 64GB SSD over a 320GB HDD that will stay empty.
DanNeely, I agree 100%. When the floods in. Asia caused disk drives to dramatically increase in price, flash drive sales jumped in volume despite still being more expensive than disks because disks were no longer seen as cheap easily available commodities.
One volume manufacturing drops off, disks will inevitably rise in price.
the lower the profit margins for SSDs fall, the more likely that non NAND manufacturers will start bowing out. The only possibility of a non NAND manufacturer staying in the SSD business in the long run is if they provide additional services/features that others aren't providing, which is very hard to do.
I think you mean "struck while the iron was hot", not "stricken".
I've used an OCZ Agility III for the past year and a half without issue, so with any luck Toshiba will just help them make better SSDs. It opens up the chance for hybrid drives amongst other things.
Grammatically both are correct because struck and stricken are both past participles of strike. This might be one of those US vs UK English things but I've changed it to struck now because it sounds a bit better.
That press release only says that Toshiba is acquiring the SSD businesses, and leaves open the fate of the remainder of the company. The DRAM business is probably not worth much because it's a fungible market where almost no one has any brand loyalty beyond a generic premium brands/cheap brands dichotomy. However in addition to their own branded PSUs, OCZ owned PC Power and Cooling, which has been known for making top quality hardware. I wonder what's happening with them.
I think few people have brand loyalty when it comes to power supplies, and those that do probably prefer one of the OEMs. Both OCZ and PC P&C power supplies are rebranded power supplies made by OEMS, according to http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-o...
That was before OCZ bought the brand, and subsequently turned it's reputation from some of the best power supplies in the enthusiast circles to another re-brander of cheap Chinese garbage.
Ummm....no, PCP&C NEVER made a single power supply. Their power supplies were manufactured by either Win-Tact (Turbo-Cools) or Seasonic (Silencers). Sparkle was the first OEM to make Silencers for PCP&C, btw.
PCP&C never made a darned thing, just sold rebranded units.
The fate of the PLX and Oxford Semiconductor divisions is the most intriguing to me. Their PCIe switches and direct-attached storage controllers are found pretty much everywhere on motherboards and in external enclosures. What other sources even exist for those components?
If they are ubiquitous, they'll survive in some form since they represent a guaranteed revenue stream for whoever ends up holding them when the dust settles.
OCZ did not acquire whole PLX, only a team of ~40 engineers focusing on SoCs, firmware and software. It's likely that most of PLX' business will continue to operate normally.
I have been using OCZ PSU's for a long time now. They have always been reliable and never had a problem when needed to RMA them. Also own an OCZ Vertex SSD and have been very happy with it.
I really hope Toshiba keeps the OCZ brand intact with all their assets. Such a shame a great company like OCZ had to fall in the recessive times.
You do realize you almost made a joke by sticking "always been reliable" and "when needed to RMA them" in the same sentence right? Your PSUs weren't reliable. They died and you had to RMA them under warranty, which for their junk units was 3 years or less. I had a few of their ModXStream PSUs that were garbage. 2 out of 3 died in less than 2 years. They didn't go under because of the recession. They went under because they were blasting out product after product with poor validation and QC.
Depends on when the offer was made. OCZ went from under $100m for most of 2010 to a peak of $500M in 2011 and a second peak of $600M in early 2012 with a $400M average from mode 2011 to late 2012. Before their price began collapsing late in the year, even if the $1bn offer was serious it could've been argued that it wasn't enough of a premium for their likely growth over the next few years.
I almost feel bad for the situation OCZ put themselves into, reading $1B vs $35M. Then again, I have a box with about 50 failed OCZ and other Indillinx SSDs sitting in my office, so I don't feel TOO bad for them
Yer...that 1B vs 35M is some sick irony. I hope with Tosh's help that the Ocz name will climb back to the top with solid validated hardware. Maybe they'll restore PC P&C to it's former glory...I bought my 600W Silencer about 2 month b4 they were bought by Ocz. I've been a loyal Ocz customer for a few years now. Heh, most of what I've learned about SSD tech is from hanging out on their support forum...esp during the early days of 1st and 2nd gen drives (before sandforce). Also gotta say that I've never seen a support team quite as dedicated as the guys at Ocz. Extremely knowledgeable techs that weathered many a storm and adsorbed boat loads of flak created by new product launch disasters. I'm glad to hear these guys still have a job...one that should get easier as Tosh has the resources to properly validate new products and not be prone to launch day surprises. All this being said, I'm thinkin' there's no where to go but up for Ocz. Can't wait to see some Barefoot 3 drives using Tosh's 19nm toggle. Would really LOVE to see a line of BF3 + 19nm toggle based, bootable PCI-E drives. Also hoping Tosh (or Indilinx) will have an answer to the upcoming SF-3700 beast of a controller. Still can't believe Intel nuked sata express for the P97 chipset...that sux imo.
Good riddance- three Vertex2's (2x120gb + 240gb) dying and taking my data with them (a number of BTC in a wallet, included!) was enough to sour me on OCZ permanently.
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JlHADJOE - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
wow that sounds really cheap!Ikefu - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
If Toshiba can put the muscle and fabs behind OCZs innovation to keep them a major player I'm all for it. I really don't want to see the SSD market collapse down to Samsung, Intel, and Micron as the lone players. The more competitors the sooner the 1TB SSDs for under $300 will arrive.Solid State Brain - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Eventually only the NAND producers will remain on the SSD market:- Intel-Micron
- Sandisk-Toshiba
- Samsung
- Hynix (perhaps they will eventually partner with somebody to better compete in the NAND market)
geniekid - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
I think this comment alludes to the bigger issue that OCZ doesn't really produce much of what it sells. If you look at the products advertised on their website it mostly comes down to SSDs and power supplies. OCZ is neither a manufacturer of NAND or power supplies in the sense that it purchases these things from other OEMS and rebrands/repackages them.Guspaz - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
That speaks volumes for the position that the traditional hard drive vendors like Western Digital or Seagate are in, though, doesn't it? So far, efforts by hard drive companies to break into the SSD market have largely failed, and even if they find some success, they'll always be at a disadvantage having to pay markup on NAND.It's true that they still have relevance today because the cost per gig of NAND is still high enough that it's not practical for bulk storage, but if NAND passes the tipping point (where it's not necessarily cheaper than hard drives, but simply cheap enough), or if something like MRAM takes over and enables lower costs, then that could be the end of them.
JDG1980 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Right now, the least expensive SSDs (such as Samsung's 840 Evo) sell for about 50 cents a gigabyte if you buy a large unit - maybe a little lower if you snag a good holiday deal. Mid-range hard drives are about 5 cents a gigabyte - you'll pay about $150 for a decent 3TB (3000GB) HDD, for example.So, in order for SSDs to be competitive with mechanical hard drives for mass storage, they have to come down in price by an order of magnitude. That can happen, but it may take another 5 to 10 years.
DanNeely - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Cheap enough != as cheap as equivalent HDD capacity. Once NAND is cheap enough that $50-100 will buy enough storage for the average user the consumer HDD market will begin imploding. With current use patterns I'd put the capacity numbers needed at those pricepoints at 120/240gb. Even with users average data usage increasing I suspect we're only 2-4 years away from that point.HDDs will still be around for a while after that for mass low frequency of access data in the enterprise; but as the high volume consumer market goes away those of us who need terabytes of storage for huge steam accounts, photography, home media servers, etc will end up paying something closer to enterprise costs because the volumes that drive costs down won't be around. Just comparing the prices of basic consumer HDDs to prosumer RAID suitable models suggests we could see an effective doubling of the price per TB; probably in the form of several years when price falls are much smaller than historically normal.
stickmansam - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
What is interesting is that Corsair is in pretty much the same situation as OCZ but has been doing pretty good.For SSD's to be viable for mainstream use I think we need 240-256GB drives to hit about $50-75. 120/128 are not enough for regular use since the OS + a few programs/games + few movies/music can fill them up pretty quickly.
emvonline - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
The low price for a 128-256GB ssd is 60c per GB today. Average is about 75c for oow end client drives. So we are pretty far from 25c per GB (3-5 years).Side note ....corsair is not like ocz. ocz died due to fraud and repeated lying about sales. They would have survived and been bought for about 1B if not for that. Oops.
StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
Corsair is a little different, it has a stupidly massive loyal following of enthusiasts who aren't afraid to deck out their PC's with Corsair Speakers, Headphones, Ram, Power Supplies, Keyboards, Mice, Coolers, Fans, SSD's, Flash Drives and Cases.They operate on revenue of about 450+ million a year, mostly targeting pretty much only gamers and enthusiasts.
Plus, they didn't have their brand tarnished by reliability issues.
Granted, I'm still happily sitting with an OCZ Vertex 2 64Gb SSD, which has been rock solid for years, but not everyone is so lucky.
And when it finally does die, I'll probably jump over to Samsung, but considering it's age and capacity I wouldn't be to worried about it dying right now.
Kjella - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Yeah, the important thing here is that HDDs don't scale down, checking with my local price site the cheapest laptop hard drive you can buy is 320GB and for roughly 50% more you can get a 64GB SSD. Per gigabyte that's still 7.5x the HDD, but you can't buy a 100GB HDD for 1/3rd the price. If for example many business workers with Windowsand Office - no Steam, no video, no photos, no music collection just Word, Excel, Powerpoint and some business-specific apps. I remote in to a virtual machine at work, it's just 40GB yet has all the tools I need. In that case I'd prefer a laptop with a 64GB SSD over a 320GB HDD that will stay empty.speculatrix - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
DanNeely, I agree 100%.When the floods in. Asia caused disk drives to dramatically increase in price, flash drive sales jumped in volume despite still being more expensive than disks because disks were no longer seen as cheap easily available commodities.
One volume manufacturing drops off, disks will inevitably rise in price.
menting - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
the lower the profit margins for SSDs fall, the more likely that non NAND manufacturers will start bowing out. The only possibility of a non NAND manufacturer staying in the SSD business in the long run is if they provide additional services/features that others aren't providing, which is very hard to do.Primum - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
I think you mean "struck while the iron was hot", not "stricken".I've used an OCZ Agility III for the past year and a half without issue, so with any luck Toshiba will just help them make better SSDs. It opens up the chance for hybrid drives amongst other things.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Grammatically both are correct because struck and stricken are both past participles of strike. This might be one of those US vs UK English things but I've changed it to struck now because it sounds a bit better.yefi - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/stricken.htmlPrimum - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Pretty sure Americans say struck, but I'm British.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
American, and I've never seen stricken used like this. I agree fully with yefi's link on the few cases where stricken is appropriate.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
That press release only says that Toshiba is acquiring the SSD businesses, and leaves open the fate of the remainder of the company. The DRAM business is probably not worth much because it's a fungible market where almost no one has any brand loyalty beyond a generic premium brands/cheap brands dichotomy. However in addition to their own branded PSUs, OCZ owned PC Power and Cooling, which has been known for making top quality hardware. I wonder what's happening with them.geniekid - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
I think few people have brand loyalty when it comes to power supplies, and those that do probably prefer one of the OEMs. Both OCZ and PC P&C power supplies are rebranded power supplies made by OEMS, according to http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-o...DarkStryke - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
That was before OCZ bought the brand, and subsequently turned it's reputation from some of the best power supplies in the enthusiast circles to another re-brander of cheap Chinese garbage.C'DaleRider - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link
Ummm....no, PCP&C NEVER made a single power supply. Their power supplies were manufactured by either Win-Tact (Turbo-Cools) or Seasonic (Silencers). Sparkle was the first OEM to make Silencers for PCP&C, btw.PCP&C never made a darned thing, just sold rebranded units.
Guspaz - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Their DRAM business is probably not worth much because it doesn't exist :) They got out of that market entirely years ago.repoman27 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
The fate of the PLX and Oxford Semiconductor divisions is the most intriguing to me. Their PCIe switches and direct-attached storage controllers are found pretty much everywhere on motherboards and in external enclosures. What other sources even exist for those components?DanNeely - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
If they are ubiquitous, they'll survive in some form since they represent a guaranteed revenue stream for whoever ends up holding them when the dust settles.Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
OCZ did not acquire whole PLX, only a team of ~40 engineers focusing on SoCs, firmware and software. It's likely that most of PLX' business will continue to operate normally.Bromsin - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
I have been using OCZ PSU's for a long time now. They have always been reliable and never had a problem when needed to RMA them. Also own an OCZ Vertex SSD and have been very happy with it.I really hope Toshiba keeps the OCZ brand intact with all their assets. Such a shame a great company like OCZ had to fall in the recessive times.
Bob Todd - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
You do realize you almost made a joke by sticking "always been reliable" and "when needed to RMA them" in the same sentence right? Your PSUs weren't reliable. They died and you had to RMA them under warranty, which for their junk units was 3 years or less. I had a few of their ModXStream PSUs that were garbage. 2 out of 3 died in less than 2 years. They didn't go under because of the recession. They went under because they were blasting out product after product with poor validation and QC.blanarahul - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Yes. Yes. Hell yes. I am all for a properly and extensively validated Vector 150.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
They turned down $1billion? haha they sell nothing but garbage... they should ahve taken the money and run. At any rate they are getting justice now.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Depends on when the offer was made. OCZ went from under $100m for most of 2010 to a peak of $500M in 2011 and a second peak of $600M in early 2012 with a $400M average from mode 2011 to late 2012. Before their price began collapsing late in the year, even if the $1bn offer was serious it could've been argued that it wasn't enough of a premium for their likely growth over the next few years.djscrew - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
Picture or it didn't happen.DanNeely - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
https://ycharts.com/companies/OCZ/market_capRU482 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
I almost feel bad for the situation OCZ put themselves into, reading $1B vs $35M. Then again, I have a box with about 50 failed OCZ and other Indillinx SSDs sitting in my office, so I don't feel TOO bad for themSivar - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
PNG for images like this! PNG!(or GIF, but definitely not JPG! They look horrible and image sizes are much larger)
MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
And I thought those ligther pixels without the Toshiba name were features. Meant to make it look like some hand-drawing ;)Movieman420 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Yer...that 1B vs 35M is some sick irony. I hope with Tosh's help that the Ocz name will climb back to the top with solid validated hardware. Maybe they'll restore PC P&C to it's former glory...I bought my 600W Silencer about 2 month b4 they were bought by Ocz. I've been a loyal Ocz customer for a few years now. Heh, most of what I've learned about SSD tech is from hanging out on their support forum...esp during the early days of 1st and 2nd gen drives (before sandforce). Also gotta say that I've never seen a support team quite as dedicated as the guys at Ocz. Extremely knowledgeable techs that weathered many a storm and adsorbed boat loads of flak created by new product launch disasters. I'm glad to hear these guys still have a job...one that should get easier as Tosh has the resources to properly validate new products and not be prone to launch day surprises. All this being said, I'm thinkin' there's no where to go but up for Ocz. Can't wait to see some Barefoot 3 drives using Tosh's 19nm toggle. Would really LOVE to see a line of BF3 + 19nm toggle based, bootable PCI-E drives. Also hoping Tosh (or Indilinx) will have an answer to the upcoming SF-3700 beast of a controller. Still can't believe Intel nuked sata express for the P97 chipset...that sux imo.batongxue - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
DAT cheap!?djscrew - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
Seems like a steal for their IP.Movieman420 - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
Big steal. Hell....it cost Ocz $35M just to buy Indilinx. Tosh scored in a big way and this is gonna lead to some great hardware before long.toyotabedzrock - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
It would be a serious mistake to kill the OCZ brand name.JlHADJOE - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
So... between a Toshiba branded SSD and an OCZ, you'd choose the OCZ one?Comdrpopnfresh - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Good riddance- three Vertex2's (2x120gb + 240gb) dying and taking my data with them (a number of BTC in a wallet, included!) was enough to sour me on OCZ permanently.