Silicon Insider: The Solid State of Samsung

May 25, 2006 — -- Though you will likely never see them, two new Samsung laptops are about to mark a turning point in the history of computing.

Reportedly, in the next few weeks, the South Korean electronics giant will formally introduce two new laptop computers, the models Q1 and Q30. At first glance, they seem like nothing special -- 32 gigabytes of memory storage, low-resolution screen, uninteresting packaging -- the kind of second-rate laptop you see on sale every day at Wal-Mart and stereo superstores for 700 bucks.

So what makes these dreary little laptops worth their jaw-dropping predicted retail prices of $2,430 and $3,700? They have no disk drives! We're talking 32 gigs of flash semiconductor memory -- creating the world's first solid-state laptop computers. The only moving parts will be your fingers.

Given the pace of technological innovation, this news will likely be met with a polite golf clap, and we'll move on to the Next Big Thing. But instead, at least for the time it takes to finish this column, let's stop and ponder what this announcement means.

You Won't Buy Them at Circuit City

First, let's take the computers themselves. As I said, you'll likely never see them: The Q1 and Q30 are classic examples of experimental tech products whose price and performance are such that they will only be sold to a limited audience in a controlled market. In this case, the two Samsung laptops are expected to be sold only in the company's home Korean market.

That's not a bad move by Samsung. These days the Far East is the world's hottest market for new consumer electronics, home to the most rabid early adopters of the latest new gizmos. If you want to test out a new product design, South Korea is as good a place as anywhere to do it: Koreans will buy these two laptops just for the social cachet of owning them.

Moreover, by keeping the machines in Korea, Samsung can also control their distribution, making it as difficult as possible for competitors to buy and take them apart, as well as maintain a controlled field test to look for problems with the memory, consumer attitudes and so forth. Marketing a crappy machine around the world that might contain some fatal but unseen flaw would be a great way to kill the solid-state laptop industry even before it is born. Keeping them close by probably eliminates this possibility.

Samsung Is the Lurking Tech Giant

So why even build these computers at all? Why doesn't Samsung just wait until it has a laptop to match the innovations within and -- after a few more months of Moore's Law ticking away at chip prices -- at a competitive price?I think it's a matter of politics. Though it still doesn't get its due in the U.S. business press, Samsung is the biggest, scariest electronics company on the planet these days. Mention Samsung to Intel executives, and they get facial tics. You may have thought all of those re-orgs at Intel were in reaction to the growing challenge from AMD at the high end of microprocessors -- but you'd be wrong. The truth is that Intel all but ceded that end of the business to turn and face the mounting threat from Samsung. Erstwhile strategic partners in other businesses, in the one true head-to-head battle between Intel and Samsung -- flash memory chips -- the Korean company handed the Silicon Valley company an unprecedented defeat.

So, even as Intel talks about entering the systems business, is it any surprise that Samsung decides to rush to market a new computer filled only with -- ahem -- flash memory chips? This is a resounding Pwn3d! by Samsung on Intel. It is also Samsung's warning to both the big disk memory companies and the world's PC makers that flash isn't just for iPods anymore.

Flash easily follows Moore's Law, while disk struggles to keep up -- which means that prices will fall faster for these new solid-state computers than for their traditional counterparts. Did I mention greater reliability (no moving parts, an equivalent number -- about 100,000 -- of rewrites), lower power consumption and, eventually, smaller size? And since Samsung both owns the flash business and is a major PC manufacturer, you can see why it is feeling pretty triumphant these days … and everybody else in tech is quaking.

And don't count on Samsung screwing up. As I've been told by awestruck competitors, Samsung is relentless, refuses to accept failure, and will fight to the death. If I was HP or Dell, I'd be already on the phone to Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

The Achievement of Increasing Memory

Now, let's go back to the computers themselves. Think of it: a laptop that is essentially a solid slab of steel, copper and silicon (well, maybe a little cooling fan, and temporarily, a DVD player, but play along with me here) -- with all of that memory, resident in an array of semiconductor memory chips.

Meanwhile, in case you think the disk memory makers are standing still in the face of this challenge, please note that the latest vertical-format disk drives can hold 750 gigabytes. So, if flash spells the end of disks in PCs in a few years, it's hard to believe that terabyte disk memory won't find a happy home somewhere.

Every couple of years in this column I write in appreciation of the memory business. But when something like this announcement comes along, I just can't help it. Other electronics businesses -- from microprocessors to cell phones to MP3 players to PCs -- may get all the attention and fame. But what I've written before still stands: the advancement of information storage is the greatest technological achievement of the last 100 years.

Punched cards, magnetic core, magnetic tape, drum, disk, bubble, optical, chip -- the number of innovative new ways that researchers have found to keep storage density progressing at a geometric rate for the last 50 years is the single most important monument to human ingenuity in our lifetimes. Each time one technique has faltered or hit a technical wall, another has taken up the baton and kept up the race. And if people like Ray Kurzeil are right, these advances will soon bring us to the gates of true artificial intelligence -- and the next phase of mankind's evolution.

Everybody who ever worked in the digital memory storage industry ought to collectively be awarded a Nobel Prize. Or at the very least they ought to have a statue somewhere.

Once Memory Peaks, Content Becomes King

Finally, before we finish our rumination on memory, consider one last thing: A few weeks ago I had lunch with Marc Andreessen -- you know, the guy who brought us Netscape (and thus, the Web). We do this regularly, and often something memorable comes out of the conversation (like that notorious Red Herring cover "The End of Moore's Law").

This time our talk -- apropos of this week's Samsung announcement -- got around to the extraordinary advances taking place, particularly in memory. Marc brought up something I hadn't thought of before. We are only a few years away from the terabyte iPod cell phone and, even before them, laptop computer.

When you get into those kinds of astronomical numbers, Marc reminded me, you aren't talking about storing a movie or a song but every movie and song. After all, cinema is just over a century old, audio recording just a little older than that, and television, by comparison, is a youthful 60 years old. In other words, though we haven't really needed to think about it before, there is only a finite amount of recorded content out there in the world.

That means two things: First, all that archival material is only a few years away from being treated as a single entity for packaging and resale. In other words, the notion of buying an iPod and then loading it with software is only a temporary expedient. Within the decade, you will likely buy an iPod, or some competitive device, that comes with every song or movie or TV series ever done already loaded inside. And that, when you think about it, changes almost everything about the business of entertainment.

Second, once you ponder that scenario a little longer, you begin to realize that the single most important business (and profession) to be in by the end of this decade is content creation. New ideas are going to be as rare and valuable as diamonds -- and the techies are going to make way once again for the creative types. If I were young right now, I'd be looking at an MFA degree.

Tad's Tab: The latest from the teen tech trenches from my 15-year-old son, Tad Malone.

Over the last couple of months I've become a real YouTube.com addict. Here are some clips I've been enjoying lately..

I'll list more in the weeks to come.

This work is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone, once called the Boswell of Silicon Valley, is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News, as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is best-known as the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public-television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNEWS.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.