SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has completed development of its high-capacity SSD product, PS1012 U.2, designed for AI data centers. As the era of AI accelerates, the demand for high-performance enterprise SSDs (eSSD) is rapidly increasing, and QLC technology, which enables high capacity, has become the industry standard. In line with this trend, SK hynix has developed a 61 TB product using this technology and introduced it to the market.

SK hynix has been leading the SSD market for AI data centers with Solidigm, a subsidiary which commercialized QLC-based eSSD for the first time in the world. With the development of PS1012, the company expects to build a balanced SSD portfolio, thereby maximizing synergy between the two companies. With the latest 5th generation (Gen 5) PCIe, PS1012 doubles its bandwidth compared to 4th generation based products. As a result, the data transfer speed reaches 32 GT/s (Gig-transfers per second), with the sequential read performance of 13 GB/s (Gigabyte per second), which is twice that of previous generation products.

TrendForce's latest investigations found that the enterprise SSD market experienced significant growth in 3Q24, driven by robust demand from AI-related applications. Prices surged as suppliers struggled to keep pace with market needs, pushing overall industry revenue up by an impressive 28.6% QoQ. Demand for high-capacity models was especially strong, fueled by the arrival of NVIDIA's H-series products and sustained orders for AI training servers. As a result, the total procurement volume for enterprise SSDs rose 15% compared to the previous quarter.

Looking ahead to 4Q24, TrendForce forecasts a slowdown in enterprise SSD revenue as procurement demand begins to cool. Total procurement volume is expected to dip, with the peak buying period behind and server OEM orders being slightly revised downward. As shipment volume declines, overall industry revenue is also projected to decrease in the fourth quarter.

HighPoint's RocketAIC 6542AWW has established a new milestone for turnkey NVMe Storage. Despite the external RAID solution's tidy dimensions (it stands only 4.84 inches tall, 8.27 inches deep, and 9.25 inches in length), it is equipped with eight of Solidigm's D5-P5336 NVMe SSDs, and provides an astonishing 491.52 TB of enterprise storage capable of delivering 28GBs of real-world transfer speed; ideal for Edge Applications that demand fast, high-density storage solutions with small hardware footprint.

The compact external storage chassis' integrated power supply and powerful cooling system enable the NVMe media to be completely isolated from the host hardware platform. Not only does this free up interior space for the host server or workstation, it can significantly improve reliability and efficiency by offsetting power consumption and ensuring that waste heat generated by the SSDs never enters the computing environment.

Solidigm, a leading provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, announced today the introduction of the world's highest capacity PCIe solid-state drive (SSD): the 122 TB (terabyte) Solidigm D5-P5336 data center SSD. The D5-P5336 doubles the storage space of Solidigm's earlier 61.44 TB version of the drive and is the world's first SSD with unlimited Random Write endurance for five years—offering an ideal solution for AI and data-intensive workloads. Just how much storage is 122.88 TB? Roughly enough for 4K-quality copies of every movie theatrically released in the 1990s, 2.6 times over.

Data storage power, thermal and space constraints are accelerating as AI adoption increases. Power and space-efficient, the new 122 TB D5-P5336 delivers industry-leading storage efficiency from the core data center to the edge. Data center operators can deploy with confidence the 122 TB D5-P5336 from Solidigm, the proven QLC (quad-level cell) density leader with more than 100EB (exabytes) of QLC-based product shipped since 2018.

TrendForce's latest reports reveal that the second quarter of 2024 saw a significant increase in demand for enterprise SSDs due to the increased deployment of NVIDIA GPU platforms and rising storage needs driven by AI applications, along with a surge in demand from server brands. The surge in demand for high-capacity SSDs for AI applications—coupled with suppliers' inability to adjust capacity in the first half of the year—resulted in a supply shortage that drove average enterprise SSD prices up by more than 25% QoQ. This price increase led to a revenue growth of over 50% for suppliers.

Looking ahead to the third quarter, demand from North American CSP customers continues to rise, and server brands show no signs of slowing down their orders, further boosting procurement volumes of enterprise SSD. With supply shortages persisting into the third quarter, TrendForce forecasts a 15% increase in contract prices compared to the previous quarter, with supplier revenues expected to grow by nearly 20%.

TrendForce reports that NAND Flash prices continued to rise in 2Q24 as server inventory adjustments neared completion and AI spurred demand for high-capacity storage products. However, high inventory levels among PC and smartphone buyers led to a 1% QoQ decline in NAND Flash bit shipments. Despite this, ASP increased by 15% and drove total revenue to US$16.796 billion, a 14.2% growth compared to the previous quarter.

All NAND Flash suppliers returned to profitability starting in the second quarter and are expanding capacity in the third quarter to meet strong demand from AI and server markets. However, weaker-than-expected PC and smartphone sales in the first half of the year are likely to constrain NAND Flash shipment growth.

Today, Solidigm, a leading provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, announced the launch of the Solidigm D7-PS1010 and D7-PS1030 data center solid-state drives (SSDs). As the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs shipping in volume today, these drives are well suited for the IO intensity found in modern mainstream, mixed, and write-centric workloads.

"The Solidigm D7-PS1010 and D7-PS1030 SSDs were meticulously engineered to meet the increasingly demanding IO requirements across a range of workloads such as general-purpose servers, OLTP, server-based storage, decision support systems and AI/ML," said Greg Matson, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Marketing at Solidigm. "In a world where every watt counts, these drives are PCIe 5.0 done right, not only delivering industry-leading four-corner performance, but also up to 70% better energy efficiency compared to similar drives by other manufacturers."

TrendForce reports that a reduction in supplier production has led to unmet demand for high-capacity orders since 4Q23. Combined with procurement strategies aimed at building low-cost inventory, this has driven orders and significantly boosted enterprise SSD revenue, which reached US$3.758 billion in 1Q24—a staggering 62.9% QoQ increase.

TrendForce further highlights that demand for high-capacity, driven by AI servers, has surged. North American clients increasingly adopt high-capacity QLC SSDs to replace HDDs, leading to over 20% growth in Q2 enterprise SSD bit procurement. This has also driven up Q2 enterprise SSD contract prices by more than 20%, with revenue expected to grow by another 20%.

TrendForce reports that adoption of enterprise SSDs by AI servers began in February, which subsequently led to large orders. Additionally, PC and smartphone customers have been increasing their inventory levels to manage rising prices. This trend drove up NAND Flash prices and shipment levels in 1Q24 and boosted quarterly revenue by 28.1% to US$14.71 billion.

There were significant changes in market rankings this quarter, with Micron overtaking Western Digital to claim the fourth spot. Micron benefited from slightly lower prices and shipments than its competitors in 4Q23, resulting in a 51.2% QoQ revenue growth to $1.72 billion in 1Q24—the highest among its peers.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it recorded 12.43 trillion won in revenues, 2.886 trillion won in operating profit (with an operating margin of 23%), and 1.917 trillion won in net profit (with a net margin of 15%) in the first quarter. With revenues marking an all-time high for a first quarter and the operating profit a second-highest following the records of the first quarter of 2018, SK hynix believes that it has entered the phase of a clear rebound following a prolonged downturn.

The company said that an increase in the sales of AI server products backed by its leadership in AI memory technology including HBM and continued efforts to prioritize profitability led to a 734% on-quarter jump in the operating profit. With the sales ratio of eSSD, a premium product, on the rise and the average selling prices rising, the NAND business has also achieved a meaningful turnaround in the same period.

North American customers are increasing their orders for storage products as energy efficiency becomes a key priority for AI inference servers. This, in turn, is driving up demand for QLC enterprise SSDs. Currently, only Solidigm and Samsung have certified QLC products, with Solidigm actively promoting its QLC products and standing to benefit the most from this surge in demand. TrendForce predicts shipments of QLC enterprise SSD bits to reach 30 exabytes in 2024—increasing fourfold in volume from 2023.

TrendForce identifies two main reasons for the increasing use of QLC SSDs in AI applications: the products' fast read speeds and TCO advantages. AI inference servers primarily perform read operations, which occur less frequently than the data writing required by AI training servers. In comparison to HDDs, QLC enterprise SSDs offer superior read speeds and have capacities that have expanded up to 64 TB.

The third quarter of 2023 witnessed suppliers dramatically cutting production, which underpinned enterprise SSD prices. The fourth quarter saw a resurgence in contract prices, driven by robust buying activity and heightened demand from server brands and buoyed by optimistic capital expenditure forecasts for 2024. This, combined with increased demand from various end products entering their peak sales period and ongoing reductions in OEM NAND Flash inventories, resulted in some capacity shortages. Consequently, fourth-quarter enterprise SSD prices surged by over 15%. TrendForce highlights that this surge in demand and prices led to a 47.6% QoQ increase in enterprise SSD industry revenues in 4Q23, reaching approximately $23.1 billion.

The stage is set for continued fervor as we settle into the new year and momentum from server brand orders continues to heat up—particularly from Chinese clients. On the supply side, falling inventory levels and efforts to exit loss-making positions have prompted enterprise SSD prices to climb, with contract prices expected to increase by over 25%. This is anticipated to fuel a 20% revenue growth in Q1.

TrendForce reports a substantial 24.5% QoQ increase in NAND Flash industry revenue, hitting US$11.49 billion in 4Q23. This surge is attributed to a stabilization in end-demand spurred by year-end promotions, along with an expansion in component market orders driven by price chasing, leading to robust bit shipments compared to the same period last year. Additionally, the corporate sector's continued positive outlook for 2024 demand—compared to 2023—and strategic stockpiling have further fueled this growth.

Looking ahead to 1Q24, despite it traditionally being an off-season, the NAND Flash industry is expected to see a continued increase in revenue by another 20%. This anticipation is underpinned by significant improvements in supply chain inventory levels and ongoing price rises, with clients ramping up their orders to sidestep potential supply shortages and escalating costs. The ongoing expansion of order sizes is expected to drive NAND Flash contract prices up by an average of 25%.

TrendForce reports a pivotal shift in the NAND Flash market for 3Q23, primarily driven by Samsung's strategic decision to reduce production. Initially, the market was clouded by uncertainty regarding end-user demand and fears of a subdued peak season, prompting buyers to adopt a conservative approach with low inventory and slow procurement. However, as market leaders like Samsung implemented substantial production cuts, buyers' attitudes shifted toward a more aggressive procurement strategy in anticipation of a market supply decrease. This led to a stabilization and even an uptick in NAND Flash contract prices by quarter-end, driving a 3% QoQ increase in bit shipments and culminating in a total revenue of US$9.229 billion, marking an approximate 2.9% increase.

The story unfolds with Kioxia and Micron—the only two to witness a dip in revenue rankings this quarter—while Samsung maintained its robust performance. Despite sluggish demand in the server sector, Samsung's fortunes rebounded thanks to a boost in consumer electronics, especially with high-capacity products in PCs and smartphones. Samsung emerged from a trough in Q3, with strategic inventory replenishments fueling further strategic stocking, and a shift in operational focus toward maximizing profit. This led to a minor 1-3% decrease in shipped bits, but a 1-3% increase in ASP, stabilizing Q3 NAND Flash revenue at US$2.9 billion.

With a simple mod, Storage Review got a Valve Steam Deck handheld gaming console to work with the world's highest capacity SSD, the mammoth 61.44 TB variant of the Solidigm D5-P5336. At its core, the Steam Deck is a highly compacted x86-64 PC powered by an AMD Ryzen mobile processor that features an industry standard PCIe interface, which it uses for an onboard M.2-2230 NVMe SSD. Storage Review used a simple adapter that converts M.2 to U.2—the interface of the D5-P5336—and the Steam Deck just worked.

Out of the box, the Steam Deck uses Valve's SteamOS, although it's fairly straightforward to install Windows, and get the Steam application to present its user interface (with which you can play just about any Windows PC game that's not yet available on SteamOS). A quick benchmark with KDiskMark (the Linux analog of CDM) sees the D5-P5336 post sequential read speeds of 3.6 GB/s, with 2.8 GB/s sequential writes. There's a catch here, though. It's not practical to lug the D5-P5336 along with your Steam Deck, the Solidigm drive is designed for servers, and besides the U.2 connection, requires a power input that a U.2 enclosure can provide.

Solidigm today announced the D7-5810, an enterprise SSD for extremely intensity write workloads. Such a drive would be capable of write endurance in the neighborhood of 50 DWPD. For reference, the company's D7-P5620, a write-centric/mixed workload drive for data-logging, and AI ingest/preparation, offers around 3 DWPD of endurance, depending on the variant; and the read-intensive drive meant for CDNs, the D5-P5336, offers around 0.5 DWPD. Use cases for the new D7-P5810 include high performance caching for flash arrays dealing with "cooler" data; high-frequency trading, and HPC.

Solidigm D7-P5810 uses SK hynix 144-layer 3D NAND flash that's made to operate in a pure SLC configuration. The drive comes in 800 GB and 1.6 TB capacities, and offers 50 DWPD over an endurance period of 5 years (4K random writes). More specifically, both models offer 73 PBW (petabytes written) of endurance. The drive comes in enterprise-relevant 15 mm-thick U.2 form-factor, with PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface, with NVMe 1.3c and NVMe MI 1.1 protocols.

TrendForce's latest research paints a vivid picture: Q2 saw the NAND Flash market still grappling with lackluster demand and being significantly outpaced by supply. The ASP of NAND Flash also took a hit, tumbling 10-15%. Nevertheless, there was a silver lining as bit shipments grew by 19.9% QoQ from a low baseline in 1Q23. To sum up, the Q2 landscape of the NAND Flash sector witnessed a 7.4% QoQ growth in revenue, reaching US$9.338 billion.

From Q2, Samsung began reining in production with a further squeeze expected for the third quarter. With inventories set to thin out, price hikes loom on the horizon, possibly offering a remedy to the chronic supply-demand imbalance. Yet, a crowded supplier landscape in the NAND Flash sector means that many players, faced with hefty inventories, will likely continue aggressive sales into Q3. Forecasts suggests a deceleration in ASP decline for NAND Flash products in Q3 to 5-10%. Riding the stockpiling momentum for the high season, bit shipments are set to rise, propelling Q3 revenue growth past the 3% threshold.

Recently, the spot market for NAND Flash chips has seen a rise in active price inquiries for certain products, a movement driven by successful increases in wafer contract prices. TrendForce reports this uptick primarily stems from negotiations in late August between NAND Flash suppliers and key Chinese module makers. These discussions led to a new wafer contract that successfully boosted the price of 512 Gb wafers by approximately 10%.

Other suppliers have also raised prices for their comparable products, signaling a shift in supplier sentiment: they are now less inclined to finalize deals at lower prices. This change has contributed to a short-term surge in the wafer spot market. Nevertheless, whether this surge in procurement is supported by actual end-user demand remains uncertain, as these orders have arisen in reaction to adjustments in supply-side pricing.

TrendForce research reveals that, due to the impacts of high inflation and economic downturn, CSPs are adopting more conservative strategies when it comes to capital expenditure and consistently reducing their annual server demand forecasts. Currently, CSPs in China have reported a decline in cloud orders compared to last year, leading to a subsequent decrease in annual procurement volumes for enterprise SSDs. In North America, some clients have postponed mass production timelines for new server platforms while ramping up investments in AI servers. These factors have resulted in enterprise SSD orders falling below expectations. Consequently, global enterprise SSD revenue hit an all-time low in the second quarter, totaling just $1,500 million—a QoQ decrease of 24.9%.

Demand for AI servers remains strong in the third quarter, while orders and shipment momentum for general-purpose servers have yet to show signs of recovery. This continues to put pressure on the purchasing volume of enterprise SSDs, and annual bit volume is expected to be lower than last year. Meanwhile, vendors have once again reduced capacity utilization to slow down inventory growth. Server customers still maintain high inventory levels, and their purchasing momentum remains insufficient. This is expected to lead to an approximate 15% QoQ decline in the average price of enterprise SSDs in the third quarter, which may further result in a lackluster revenue performance for the peak season.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is delivering a high-throughput, low latency E3.S storage solutions supporting the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 drives and CXL modules to meet the demands of large AI Training and HPC clusters, where massive amounts of unstructured data must be delivered to the GPUs and CPUs to achieve faster results.

Supermicro's Petascale systems are a new class of storage servers supporting the latest industry standard E3.S (7.5 mm) Gen 5 NVMe drives from leading storage vendors for up to 256 TB of high throughput, low latency storage in 1U or up to a half petabyte in 2U. Inside, Supermicro's innovative symmetrical architecture reduced latency by ensuring the shortest signal paths for data and maximized airflow over critical components, allowing them to run at optimal speeds. With these new systems, a standard rack can now hold over 20 Petabytes of capacity for high throughput NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) configurations, ensuring that GPUs remain saturated with data. Systems are available with either the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors or 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.

Solidigm over the weekend announced the Solidigm D5-P5336 line of enterprise SSDs. The company earns bragging rights for having the highest capacity among production SSDs, with these coming in capacities of up to 61.44 TB—an incredible amount of storage that HDDs have yet to catch up to. These drives are targeted at the data-center, where they not just replace HDDs due to their sheer density, but also provide the advantage of responsive flash storage. The drives aren't gunning to top SSD performance charts, the design goal is simply capacity and reliability. The D5-P5336 series feature enterprise-grade QLC NAND flash memory that's been extensively tested for reliability and write endurance.

The Solidigm D5-P5336 series comes in three data-center relevant form-factors—15 mm-thick U.2, 7.5 mm-thick E3.S, and the E1.L (ruler) form-factor. Capacities start at 7.68 TB for the U.2 and E3.S models, and 15.36 TB for the E1.L. The maximum capacity on offer is 61.44 TB for the U.2 and E1.L form-factors, and 30.72 TB for the E3.S. Among the capacity variants are 15.36 TB, 30.72 TB, and 61.44 TB. The drives use a proprietary controller that takes advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface, and NVMe 1.4c protocol. The star attraction, however, is the 192-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory made in-house by Solidigm.

Solidigm, a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, has announced the launch of Solidigm Synergy 2.0 software. The Solidigm Synergy software suite improves overall system performance and delivers a better user experience than hardware alone can provide. This free download includes two elements, both optional, but highly recommended: the Solidigm Synergy Driver, which automatically improves the performance of Solidigm SSDs, and the Solidigm Synergy Toolkit, which offers useful SSD health reporting and tools for SSDs from any manufacturer.

Solidigm is the only company today that is investing in a solution with software built on top of the SSD that understands system behavior and adapts based on the user's needs. The latest Solidigm Synergy software improves the PC user experience for all SSD users. It increases performance where it matters most on Solidigm SSDs, and offers a host of useful drive management features for all SSDs, regardless of manufacturer. Solidigm is combining breakthrough SSD products with revolutionary software solutions and plans to introduce further innovations to deliver additional improvements to end-users.

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.

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.

Market intelligence firm TrendForce reports that the whole NAND Flash market was severely weakened by plummeting demand in 3Q22. Because shipments of end products including consumer electronics and servers had been below expectations, the overall NAND ASP fell by 18.3% QoQ. Furthermore, the general economic outlook remained pessimistic, so enterprises across many sectors started to scale back their capital expenditure plans and halted the momentum of their procurement activities. Due to this development, the problem of excess inventory eventually spread to NAND Flash suppliers. The pressure on suppliers to make sales was ratcheted up dramatically. According to TrendForce's investigation, NAND Flash bit shipments fell by 6.7% QoQ for 3Q22, and the overall NAND Flash ASP also kept sliding. On account of the unfavorable market situation, the NAND Flash industry recorded a total revenue of around US$13.71 billion for 3Q22. The QoQ revenue decline reached as much as 24.3%.

The ranking of NAND Flash suppliers by revenue saw two notable changes for 3Q22. First, SK Group moved down to third place as it suffered the largest revenue drop among suppliers. Its revenue slipped by 29.8% QoQ to US$2.54 billion mainly due to the significant deterioration of the demand for PCs and smartphones. Its subsidiary Solidigm was also affected by the slowdown in server procurements. Previously, servers had a fairly stable demand situation compared with other kinds of end products. However, server demand eventually buckled in 3Q22 as result of enterprises cutting capital expenditure and undergoing a period of inventory correction. Compared with 2Q22, SK Group (that encompasses SK hynix and Solidigm) posted a drop of 11.1% in bit shipments and an even steeper decline of more than 20% in ASP.