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 research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

Today Solidigm is expanding its performance-optimized D7 Product Series with new solid-state storage drives (SSDs)—the D7-P5520 and the D7-P5620—for data center and enterprise use. These drives are optimized for real-world compute and storage server workloads and are available in an extended range of form factors and capacities. They offer accelerated performance and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) by enabling a smaller storage footprint and lower power consumption. The D7-P5520 (designed for read-intensive and light mixed workloads), and the D7-P5620 (designed for mixed workloads), are the first family of products being introduced by Solidigm, which launched as a standalone company in December 2021.

The D7 Series comprises the industry's most advanced PCIe 4.0 SSD family of products given their capacity offerings, breadth of form factors and optimized performance capabilities. These SSDs are optimized for real-world workloads and reflect insights gained from deep technical engagements with leading cloud service providers, OEMs, and storage innovators. Designed and tested with zero tolerance for data errors, consistently durable IOPS and QoS, and with near-zero lifetime performance degradation, they can be deployed with the utmost confidence.

Today SK hynix and Solidigm jointly introduced their first collaborative product, a new enterprise solid-state drive (eSSD), P5530. This limited release product highlights the emerging partnership between SK hynix and Solidigm, which formed three months ago when SK hynix acquired Intel's NAND and SSD business. The P5530 combines SK hynix's 128-layer 4D NAND flash with Solidigm's SSD controller and firmware supporting a PCIe Gen 4 interface. The product is offered in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacity options. SK hynix and Solidigm worked together to optimize performance with specific data center use cases and targeted deployments in mind.

Since the launch of Solidigm, the companies have partnered to forge a forward-moving strategy and co-develop products while reinforcing common values across the companies. Through the ongoing partnership and collaboration with Solidigm, SK hynix expects to enhance its NAND flash business competitiveness to the same extent as its DRAM business.

"With in-time demonstration of the collaborative product based on the combined competence of SK hynix and Solidigm, we aim to not only enhance our NAND flash business competitiveness but also speed up our "Inside America" strategy," said Kevin (Jongwon) Noh, President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at SK hynix. "SK hynix and Solidigm will continue to partner in order to optimize both companies' operations to create greater synergies."

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.

SK hynix today announced that it has completed the first phase of the transaction to acquire Intel's NAND and solid-state drive (SSD) business. Following the recent merger clearance from China's State Administration for Market Regulation on Dec. 22, SK hynix closed the first phase of the transaction by acquiring Intel's SSD business and the Dalian NAND flash manufacturing facility in China. In exchange, SK hynix will pay US $7 billion in consideration.

In the second phase of the transaction, SK hynix will acquire from Intel the remaining assets in relation to its NAND business, including IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers, R&D employees for NAND flash wafers, the Dalian facility workforce, and the other associated tangible / intangible assets. Closing of the second phase is expected to occur in or after March 2025 with the remaining payment of US $2 billion, which will complete the entire deal.