Although NAND suppliers have continued to roll back production, there is still an oversupply of NAND Flash as demand for products such as servers, smartphones, and notebooks is still too weak. Therefore, TrendForce predicts that the ASP of NAND Flash will continue to fall in 2Q23, though that decline may shrink to 5~10%. The key to supply and demand returning to a market equilibrium lies in whether NAND suppliers can cut back on production even more. TrendForce believes if demand remains stable, then the ASP of NAND Flash will have an opportunity to rebound in 4Q23; if demand is weaker than expected, then ASP will take longer to recover.

Client SSD: Currently, PC OEM's have managed to liquidate most of their component inventory, and are now gearing up in preparation for mid-year sales events. Suppliers are cutting prices to clear out their inventories of PCIe Gen 3 SSDs, which are gradually being phased out. Meanwhile, prices of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs continue to face downward pressure due to a slow intake of new customer orders. The continuous decline of QLC products in 1Q23 has also dragged down the prices of TLC products, and there is relatively little room for prices to keep falling in 2Q23. While it still remains unclear whether or not demand will recover, TrendForce projects that the prices of PC client SSDs will drop 5~10% in 2Q23.

No more to traditional mechanical drives as the era of high-capacity QLC has arrived. Leading memory brand Team Group today has announced the launch of two QLC SSDs to meet the various needs of users: Team Group MP33Q M.2 PCIe SSD and T-FORCE VULCAN Z QLC SSD come in capacities of up to 2 TB and 4 TB, respectively. Whether for more storage for installing or storing OSs, programs, games, or documents, they are the perfect upgrade solutions for your computer.

In response to different storage upgrade needs of consumers, Team Group MP33Q M.2 PCIe SSD is designed with 3D QLC flash memory chips, PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface and NVMe 1.3 protocol. With up to 2,500 MB/s in read speed and 2,100 MB/s in write speed, it outperforms SATA III SSDs by five times and is available in capacities of up to 2 TB. With its carefully selected 3D QLC NAND flash and SLC Cache technology, Team Group MP33Q M.2 PCIe SSD brings a top-of-the-line solution to the storage market.

TrendForce's latest investigations reveal that the global NAND Flash market has been facing a demand headwind since 2H22. In response, the supply chain has been scrambling to clear out inventory, driving down NAND Flash contract prices by 20-25%. Enterprise SSD took the brunt of the fall with prices plummeting 23-28%. Despite manufacturers lowering prices in an attempt to drive up demand, clients are hesitant to purchase more components for fear of overstock. As a result, NAND Flash bit shipments rose by a mere 5.3% as ASP fell 22.8%. Global NAND Flash revenue was reported to be US$10.29 billion in 4Q22—down 25% QoQ.

TrendForce reports that Kioxia and Micron saw both a reduction in production and price in 4Q22. Kioxia's revenue plunged 30.5% due to weak demand from PC and smartphone clients and data centers readjusting their inventory. Micron generated a quarterly revenue of US$1.1 billion—a staggering 34.7% QoQ drop—that has led them to drastically decrease their capacity utilization rate for fabs. Luckily, Micron was able to ship their 232-layer client SSDs in 4Q22 as scheduled, and with the 176-layer QLC enterprise SSD hot on its heels, Micron's bit shipments are predicted to steadily improve in 2023 with their revenue climbing gradually quarter by quarter.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced the SM2268XT, its latest high-performance PCIe Gen 4 SSD controller solution optimized for higher speed NAND transfer rates. The SM2268XT's superior performance and robust reliability allows customers to accelerate development of next-generation SSDs using current and future TLC and QLC 3D NAND flash with comprehensive data integrity and correction without compromising throughput and latency.

The SM2268XT features a dual-core ARM R8 CPU with four lanes of 16 Gb/s PCIe data flow and supports four NAND channels with up to 3,200 MT/s per channel, enabling designers to take advantage of higher throughput next-generation high-speed TLC and QLC 3D NAND flash. Its multi-core design automatically balances the compute load to deliver industry-leading sequential read and write speeds of 7,400 MB/s & 6,500 MB/s, and random read & write speed of 1,200K IOPS. In addition, its advanced architecture enables lower power consumption and rigorous data protection, providing high performance and reliability in a cost-effective DRAM-less PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD solution.

At the 2023 International CES, we caught a hold of Phison, makes or arguably the most popular SSD controllers, which sprung to prominence on being the first to market with PCIe Gen 4 NVMe controllers, and now hopes to repeat it with PCIe Gen 5. We'd been shown a reference-design Phison E26-powered M.2 SSD, along with some hardware specs of the controller itself. The drive itself isn't much to look at—a standard looking M.2-2280 drive with a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface, and the Phison E26 controller with its shiny IHS being prominently located next to a DDR4 memory chip, and two new-generation Micron Technology 3D NAND flash memory chips.

The Phison E26 controller, bearing the long-form model number PS5026-E26, is an NVMe 2.0 spec client-segment SSD controller. It has been built on the TSMC 12 nm FinFET silicon-fabrication node. The controller features an integrated DRAM controller with support for DDR4 and LPDDR4 memory types for use as DRAM cache. Its main flash interface is 8-channel with 32 NAND chip-enable (CE) lines, support for TLC and QLC NAND flash, a dual-CPU architecture, and hardware-acceleration for AES-256, TCG-Opal, and Pyrite. The controller features Phison's 5th generation LPDC ECC and internal RAID engines. For its reference-design 2 TB TLC-based drive, Phison claims sequential transfer rates of up to 13.5 GB/s reads, with up to 12 GB/s writes. The 4K random-access performance is rated at up to 1.5 million IOPS reads, with up to 2 million IOPS writes.

TrendForce reports that the recent easing of tight supply for components has led to rising shipments for enterprise servers. Furthermore, ODMs for the most part have been able to sustain the momentum of data center build-out with the demand from ByteDance and the tenders issued by Chinese telecom companies. Nevertheless, the performance of the enterprise SSD market on the whole has been impacted by falling NAND Flash prices. For 3Q22, the NAND Flash industry's enterprise SSD revenue dropped by 28.7% QoQ to US$5.22 billion. Furthermore, all enterprise SSD suppliers recorded a negative performance for the period as well.

Regarding individual enterprise SSD suppliers' revenue figures for 3Q22, Samsung posted around US$2.12 billion. Its market share also shrank to 40.6% from 44.5% in 2Q22. Samsung's performance was mainly dragged down by the decline in its NAND Flash ASP. In the aspect of product development, SSDs featuring 128L NAND Flash and PCIe 4.0 will remain Samsung's main offerings for enterprise storage during 2023.

Solidigm—the company that Intel sold its SSD business to—held a tech day last week where the company shared some details about its future roadmaps. The company appears to be focusing on 3D QLC NAND and its 192-layer product promises both larger drives, but also enhanced endurance for QLC NAND. For example, Solidigm's 30.72 TB SSD is promising a PBW of around 32 PB (Petabyte) endurance. This is using what the company calls QLC Essential Endurance NAND.

However, its QLC Value Endurance NAND is what will enable the 61.44 TB drive, which is said to offer around 65 PB write endurance, but it should be noted that this is at 16 KB aligned data or during other types of light data writes. Neither type of NAND is destined for consumer applications as of now, as Solidigm is only targeting E1, E3 and U.2 form factors. Regardless, this appears to be a huge step forward for 3D QLC NAND and Solidigm is hoping that its upcoming drives will be able to replace mechanical drives in the enterprise market space. On top of this, Solidigm also claims to offer better throughput and latency compared to its competitors, but we're still looking at SATA type level SSD performance for the IOPS. The first drives with the new 192-layer 3D QLC NAND are expected to be available sometime early next year.

Kingston released the NV2 line of entry-level M.2 NVMe SSDs succeeding the NV1 series from early-2021, which was infamous for its hardware-specs lottery. The biggest change with the NV2 series is the move to PCI-Express Gen 4 (from Gen 3 for the NV1 series), even though it doesn't appear like they can take advantage of all that bandwidth.

The Kingston NV2 comes in capacities of 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB; and offer sequential transfer speeds of up to 3000 MB/s reads, with up to 1300 MB/s writes; with endurance ratings of up to 80 TBW for 250 GB, 160 TBW for 500 GB, 320 TBW for 1 TB, and 640 TBW for 2 TB. The company won't mention the controller + NAND flash combo in use (so it could use whatever combination it wants to in the future, as long as the advertised speeds and endurance are achieved); but in all likelihood, this is Phison E19T DRAMless controller that features PCI-Express 4.0 x4, paired with 3D QLC NAND flash. Kingston is backing these with 3-year warranties.

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

Solidigm has announced the Solidigm P41 Plus, the company's first branded solid-state storage drive (SSD) since becoming a company in December 2021. The P41 Plus is an innovative PCIe 4.0 product that delivers the industry's best combination of performance and value to PC users for everyday productivity and gaming. Capable of delivering up to 4,125 MB/s sequential read speed, the Solidigm P41 Plus represents a breakthrough in cost efficiency, delivering great PCIe 4.0 performance at a price that won't break the budget for everyday PC users. The Solidigm P41 Plus features 144-layer 3D NAND and is widely available in an M.2 2280 form factor in capacities of 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. For increased design flexibility, the Solidigm P41 Plus is also available to OEMs in 2230 and 2242 sizes.

In a move that reinforces Solidigm's commitment to being a new paradigm in solid-state storage, the company has invested significantly in storage software to unlock the best possible user experience. The result is Solidigm Synergy software, an optional but highly recommended suite that includes both a storage driver and a Windows application with robust drive health monitoring tools. The Solidigm Storage Driver supports host-managed caching by monitoring usage patterns to identify high-priority data, keeping the most important items in the cache, and enabling faster reads as the drive fills up.

According to TrendForce, market oversupply intensified in 2Q22 due to lagging demand and continued NAND Flash output and process advancement. The market consensus is a disappointing 2H22 peak season for consumer electronics including notebooks, TVs, and smartphones. Material inventory levels continue to rise and has become a risk to the supply chain. Due to slow destocking among distributors and a conservative stocking approach among clients, inventory problems have bubbled over upstream onto the supply side and sellers are under increased pressure to sell. TrendForce estimates, due to the rapid deterioration of the balance between supply and demand, the drop in NAND Flash pricing will expand to 8~13% in 3Q22, and this decline may continue into 4Q22.

In terms of Client SSD, due to weak consumer demand, various PC brands have significantly reduced their purchase order volume in 3Q22 in order to digest 1H22 SSD inventory. As suppliers shift focus to 176-layer client SSD, 176-layer QLC SSDs have begun to ship, and YMTC looks to expand shipment of notebook client SSDs in 2H22, price competition has become increasingly fierce, forcing manufacturers to increase price concessions to incentivize clients to up order volume. Thus, the decline in client SSD pricing is expected to expand to 8~13% in 3Q22.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced new client solid-state drives (SSDs) that bring NVMe performance to client computing applications, freeing laptops, workstations and other portables from legacy architectures that can rob devices of battery power, performance and productivity. The Micron 2300 SSD combines the power and density needed to drive compute-heavy applications in a compact form factor with the reduced power consumption modern mobile users demand. For the first time, Micron brings together NVMe performance and low-cost quad-level-cell (QLC) NAND in the Micron 2210 QLC SSD. It combines fast NVMe throughput and Micron's leadership in QLC technology to offer flash capabilities at hard disk drive-like price points while reducing power consumption by 15 times when compared to hard drives.

"Ninety percent of client platforms will ship NVMe SSDs within the next year, and the market is fast bifurcating into mainstream and value market segments," said Roger Peene, vice president of marketing, Storage Business Unit, Micron. "Our two new client SSDs, the 2300 and 2210, are optimized for each segment. The 2300 offers outstanding power performance, while the 2210 delivers compelling price performance by using Micron's industry-leading QLC NAND." Both SSDs introduced today are built on Micron's innovative 96-layer 3D NAND technology to deliver power savings, right-sized capacity and compact form factors that enable flexible designs. They also deliver enhanced client security features and capabilities for protecting data, with TCG Opal 2.0 and TCG Pyrite 2.0 support.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced the launch of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 [1] embedded flash memory devices utilizing the company's innovative 4-bit per cell quad-level-cell (QLC) technology. For applications needing high density, such as cutting-edge smartphones, Kioxia's QLC technology enables the capability to achieve the highest densities available in a single package.

Kioxia's UFS proof of concept (PoC) device is a 512 gigabyte prototype that utilizes the company's 1 terabit (128 gigabyte) BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory with QLC technology, and is now sampling to OEM customers. The PoC device is designed to meet the increasing performance and density requirements of mobile applications driven by higher resolution images, 5G networks, 4K plus video and the like.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced it has begun volume shipments of the world's first 176-layer QLC NAND SSD. Built with the most advanced NAND architecture, Micron's 176-layer QLC NAND delivers the industry's leading storage density and optimized performance for a broad range of data-rich applications. Designed for use cases spanning client and data center environments, Micron's transformative new NAND technology is now available with the introduction of the Micron 2400 SSD, the world's first 176-layer PCIe Gen4 QLC SSD for client applications. The new 176-layer QLC NAND will also be incorporated into select Micron Crucial consumer SSDs, and available as a component for system designers.

Micron's groundbreaking 176-layer QLC NAND provides a layer count and density unprecedented in QLC NAND flash and follows Micron's delivery of the industry's first 176-layer TLC NAND. Additionally, Micron's 176-layer QLC NAND enables 33% higher I/O speed and 24% lower read latency than Micron's prior generation solution. Its replacement-gate architecture is the only mass production QLC flash storage that combines charge trap with a CMOS-under-array design. These improvements are driving adoption of QLC SSDs in the client PC market, which is expected to triple QLC adoption by 2023, exceeding 35%, and reaching nearly 80% bit share in 2025.

Kingston NV1 is an entry-level M.2 NVMe SSD that comes at extremely tempting pricing of just $85 for the 1 TB version. Read all about it in our detailed performance review of the 1 TB variant. After our testing, when we peeled the label for component photography, we discovered that our drive combined a Silicon Motion SM2263XT DRAM-less controller, with 96-layer QLC NAND flash by Micron Technology. This went against every other review of the NV1 we read so far, which points to a combination of a Phison E13T series controller, with either TLC or QLC NAND flash, depending on the drive capacity. This makes our review probably the first instance of an SMI+QLC combination.

We did some digging, and are drawn to the origins of the NV1. Launched in March 2021, the drive adopts a strategy by Kingston to only advertise the performance and endurance numbers that are possible with any drive hardware combination. An AnandTech article from the time references how the drive, much like the A400 SATA SSD, comes in a number of controller+flash combinations. These include the SMI SM2263XT, or Phison E13T; and NAND that's either TLC or QLC. This uncertainty in hardware specs means that when you to go shop for an NV1, you can only expect the worst (i.e. QLC flash).

Update Dec 30th: As one of our readers pointed out, you can identify the Phison and SMI versions of the NV1 without breaking the package. This is illustrated in the second picture below, just look for the shiny controller (SM2263XT) or the capacitor arrangement (Phison E13T). Pictures on shop websites will probably not reflect this as most will either use a stock image provided by Kingston, or shoot the photo once and never update it.

Demand for NAND Flash products will undergo a noticeable and cyclical downward correction in 1Q22 as major smartphone brands wind down their procurement activities for the peak season and ODMs prepare for the New Year holidays, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. As such, the NAND Flash market will remain in an oversupply situation, with prices continuing to undergo downward corrections accordingly. However, PC OEMs have been reinstating certain orders for client SSDs since early November in response to improvements in the supply of upstream semiconductor materials. By fulfilling these orders, suppliers are able to keep their inventory level relatively low, meaning they are not under as much pressure as previously expected to reduce inventory by lowering prices. Taking these factors into account, TrendForce expects NAND Flash ASP to undergo a 10-15% QoQ decline in 1Q22, during which NAND Flash prices will experience the most noticeable declines compared to the other quarters in 2022.

Regarding the price trend of NAND Flash products across the whole 2021, TrendForce further indicates that suppliers have actively transitioned their output to higher-layer technologies, resulting in a bit supply growth that noticeably outpaces demand, though the tight supply of components such as controller ICs and PMICs has constrained the production of NAND Flash end-products. Hence, the decline in contract prices of NAND Flash products has not been as severe as previously expected. Moving ahead to 2022, however, the supply of relevant components is expected to gradually improve, so the market for various NAND Flash products will also likely shift towards a noticeable oversupply. As a result, prices of NAND Flash products will steadily decline before the arrival of the peak season in 3Q22.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic led to severe delays in manufacturing and logistics. In particular, governments worldwide began implementing border restrictions in 2Q20 to combat the ongoing health crisis, leading to a sudden decline in order volumes for channel-market SSDs, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Annual shipment of SSDs to the channel (retail) market reached 111.5 million units in 2020, a 15% YoY decrease. In terms of market share by shipment, Kingston, ADATA, and Kimtigo once again occupied the top three spots, respectively.

Looking at the channel market for SSDs as a whole, NAND Flash suppliers (among which Samsung possessed the largest market share) accounted for around 35% of the total shipments in 2020, while SSD module makers accounted for the other 65%. The top 10 module makers accounted for 71% of channel-market SSD shipments from all SSD module makers. Taken together, these figures show that the market remained relatively oligopolistic in 2020. However, it should be noted that TrendForce's ranking of SSD module makers for 2020 takes account of only products bound for the channel market and under brands owned by the module makers themselves; NAND Flash suppliers were therefore excluded from the top 10 ranking.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today launched its new SM2320 single-chip high performance, lower power and cost effective solution for external portable SSDs. The new SM2320 controller solution is designed with integrated hardware and firmware as well as high-level security features which meet the needs of game console users requiring high performance and the low power requirements of laptop users. The external portable SSD market is growing due to the performance, low power consumption, reliability and portability of such devices enabled by NAND memory. Customers include Kingston Technology, which has designed SM2320 into its new XS2000 external portable SSD, as well as other module and NAND flash providers.

"Kingston is thrilled to collaborate with SMI for the launch of our new pocket-sized XS2000 portable SSD," said Keith Schimmenti, SSD Business Manager, Kingston. "Our Kingston engineers continue to focus on improving the performance of our products and with the new SM2320 controller, we are able to get XS2000 in the hands of our customers and meet the high performance and high capacity demands they need to keep up with the ever-evolving digital world."

NAND Flash suppliers' Clients in the data center segment were gradually stepping up enterprise SSD procurement after finishing inventory adjustments, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Moreover, the adoption rate of 4/8 TB products in the enterprise SSD market increased substantially on account of the releases and adoption of the new server processor platforms from Intel and AMD. Although the recent wave of COVID-19 outbreaks that struck Southeast Asia weakened smartphone sales in 2Q21, the quarterly total NAND Flash bit shipments rose by nearly 9% QoQ, as PC OEMs still had plenty of component orders in 2Q21 due to the fairly robust notebook demand during the period. On the other hand, the shortage of controller ICs became more severe during the period, and the winter storm that battered Texas this February affected the operation of Samsung's foundry fab Line S2 in Austin. As demand for NAND Flash products rose, the overall ASP also rose by nearly 7% QoQ, and the quarterly total NAND Flash revenue rose by 10.8% QoQ to US$16.4 billion in 2Q21.

To meet the market demand for large-capacity data storage, TEAMGROUP today announced two high-performance, huge-capacity storage products: the TEAMGROUP MP34Q M.2 PCIe SSD, which utilizes QLC Flash and the PCIe Gen3x4 interface and comes with capacities up to 8 TB; and the HIGH ENDURANCE CARD designed for high-resolution surveillance systems. Whether it is for computer equipment or security systems used at home or a business, TEAMGROUP provides reliable upgrade solutions for those who seek the best performance and stability.

Today the company announced the TEAMGROUP MP34Q M.2 PCIe SSD, which utilizes QLC Flash and the PCIe Gen3x4 interface. It also supports NVMe 1.3 and the Dual Cache technologies: SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer. The MP34Q M.2 PCIe SSD offers a massive capacity of up to 8 TB, excellent read/write speeds of up to 3,400/3,000 MB/s, and an official five-year warranty with purchase, so consumers can buy and upgrade with confidence.

TEAMGROUP unveils the T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q PCIe 4.0 SSD with two patented cooling modules, QLC Flash, and PCIe Gen 4x4 interface that supports the latest NVMe 1.4 standard and provides a massive capacity of up to 4 TB. Consumers can opt for different specs based on their preference and needs, and gamers can have everything from cooling, performance, and capacity in one SSD, and explore the infinite possibilities with T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q PCIe4.0 SSD.

Equipped with QLC Flash, the T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q PCIe 4.0 SSD supports the latest PCIe Gen 4x4 interface and NVMe 1.4 standards, meaning that it is compatible with PCIe Gen3.0 interface while offering up to 4 TB in capacity. The read/write speeds reach up to 5,000/4,000 MB/s, which are 10 times faster than traditional SSDs, making it a pioneer for the new TB M.2 era and the best choice for players in terms of cooling, speed, and capacity.

KINGMAX today unveiled the AX448 line of M.2 NVMe SSDs. These drives come in high capacity variants of 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB, and take advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface, and NVMe protocol. The 1 TB variant offers sequential transfer rates of up to 4500 MB/s reads, with up to 1750 MB/s writes. The 2 TB variant does up to 4700 MB/s reads, with up to 3300 MB/s writes. The 4 TB variant tops the charts with up to 4800 MB/s reads, and up to 3450 MB/s writes, at least on paper. Endurance of the three variants is rated at up to 200 TBW for the 1 TB variant, up to 400 TBW for the 2 TB variant, and up to 800 TBW for the 4 TB variant. The drive is likely using QLC NAND flash, given these endurance numbers, although the company didn't mention the controller or NAND flash type.

Enterprise SSD procurement has been rising on the back of growing server shipments since 2Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, the share of 8 TB products in shipments of SSDs to data centers has shown the most noticeable growth, which is expected to persist through 3Q21. However, certain SSD components and parts may be in shortage due to insufficient foundry capacity. TrendForce is therefore revising the QoQ hikes in contract prices of enterprise SSDs for 3Q21 to 10-15% from the previous projection of 5-10%.

TrendForce further indicates that the high demand for enterprise SSDs in 3Q21 is attributed to several factors. First, North American cloud service providers (hyperscalers) have pretty much completed their inventory adjustments and now continue to expand their storage capacity. Second, the flow of incoming orders to traditional server brands is getting stronger over the quarters as government agencies and SMBs increase their budgets for IT infrastructure. Third, Intel and AMD are ramping up production for server CPUs based on their respective new processor platforms. Following the adoption of new CPUs, the overall demand for enterprise SSDs has also shifted to higher-density products because clients want to upgrade their computing power and storage capacity. Specifically, demand is mainly trending toward 4/8 TB SSDs since raising NAND Flash density can lower the cost of SSD deployment.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled its new enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) featuring Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology—the PM1731a. Leveraging ZNS, the SSD will maximize available user capacity and offer an extended lifespan in storage server, data center and cloud environments.

"Samsung's ZNS SSD reflects our commitment to introducing differentiated storage solutions that can substantially enhance the reliability and lifetime of server SSDs," said Sangyeun Cho, senior vice president of the Memory Software Development Team at Samsung Electronics. "We plan to leverage quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology in our next-generation ZNS drives to enable higher thresholds for storage performance and capacity in the enterprise systems of tomorrow."