The increasing demand for AI-enabled infrastructure is driving a spike in SSD orders and manufacturers are raising prices on all fronts.
TrendForce market analysis shows that demand will increase by 60% in the coming years. This will force suppliers to increase development and production and focus on producing higher capacity products to meet the growing demand for energy and data-intensive AI tools.
While HDDs have played an important role in data storage for years, SSDs have become increasingly popular in an era where AI is becoming increasingly important.
AI is to blame for skyrocketing SSD prices
Solid state drives are useful for storing model parameters and creating checkpoints to save the progress of AI models to ensure quick recovery in the event of interruptions. They also tend to be more reliable, with quarterly and annual failure rate figures reported by cloud storage giant Backblaze showing better performance compared to HDDs (it’s worth noting, however, that there is more internal data available for HDDs, so a completely fair comparison can’t be made).
They are also important for inference, where they allow real-time updates of models. For this reason, however, high-capacity drives of at least 16 TB of storage are required, with prices significantly higher than the equivalent HDD.
TrendForce highlighted that rising demand has already driven up contract prices for SSDs by a staggering 80% in the space of three quarters. Furthermore, the total capacity of AI-related SSDs procured in 2024 is expected to exceed 45 exabytes (45 million terabytes).
Business customers aren’t the only ones being affected. Consumer SSD prices have also risen significantly and consistently in recent quarters, thanks to limited supply.
While efforts are underway to improve SSD storage, including higher-density NAND flash components, the impact of AI on SSD prices could be felt for many more quarters, adding pressure to both enterprise and consumer markets.
Via The register