It’s quite interesting to see how manufacturers choose to work around problems as they come closer to the limits of technology. HDD manufacturers have hit a few walls in trying to cram their bits closer together on spinning platters (without the drives self-destructing in short order…), and now something similar has to happen with flash memory.
Even though SSDs are all about speed, as long as they can safely cram more electrons into “the same space”, I don’t really care about speed. I’m sure there will be a way for them to use fancy controller algorithms to get out a decent speed (data compression, writes to multiple packages, ever-increasing buffer sizes, etc etc). Just make sure all those tiny switches can reliably store and detect voltage, and I’ll be happy.
As for the other uses of flash memory (like storage for cameras, phones, and the like)… durability will still be a factor, but they’ll have an interesting time increasing speeds without maybe using a new SD card standard.
Or my concerns could be foolish, and the hardware engineers will discover that this new production method inherently increases speed and reliability.
