Thanks to improvements to its production technology, IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has begun to make . The joint venture should begin to produce samples of 16GB NAND devices later this year.

After production of the 16MB devices begins, memory prices should be twice as cheap next year, thanks to the extra density the devices will have, Micron representatives said. For example, you should be able to buy a 128GB thumb drive sometime next year for the same price that you would pay for a 64GB USB 2.0 thumb drive today.

It should also be possible to buy a 256GB thumb drive in retail channels next year, but as a Micron representative said, "It will command a hefty price," like 128GB drives do today.

In the PC drive space, you should be able to purchase a 1TB solid-state hard disk sometime in 2012 for the same price that a 512GB model commands now.

For tablets, which consume , it is difficult to say how plummeting memory prices will affect the total cost of these devices, but I would expect to see tablets with 128GB of memory to be in the pipeline.