Five Trends In The SSD Storage Market For 2022

Solid-state storage technology has improved a lot in recent years, with the arrival of new chips, controllers, and protocols that take performance to a new level. Looking ahead to next year, experts have identified five trends that will expand in data centers, supercomputing platforms and other environments where SSDs are gaining relevance.

The solid-state storage market is making significant progress thanks to the SSD industry’s constant advancements and improvements to other computer systems. Manufacturers are leveraging the superior capabilities of solid-state memory versus HDDs to expand their presence beyond smartphones, tablets, and portable storage devices.

In recent years, SSDs have become the most widely used solution for the primary storage of laptops and desktops and servers. They have expanded their presence in storage arrays for data centers and other IT environments. In a recent article from the Enterprise Storage Forum, the experts present five trends related to SSDs that will significantly impact the storage industry and market next year.

New PCIe 4.0 SSD Drives

The new generation of the PCI Express interface (PCIe 4.0) is generating a wave of changes in the computer industry, affecting SSD technology. The increased bandwidth of the new bus raises the potential capabilities of the devices connected to it and has led manufacturers to launch new products certified for PCIe 4.0.

Thanks to the fourth generation of PCIe, users can get more out of their pre-existing SSDs and optimize their consumption or acquire new models with a much higher bandwidth, which opens up more possibilities for different applications. PCIe Gen 4 doubles the data transfer speed of the previous generation, and the following year will see an increase in demand for all certified devices, from motherboards to graphics modules and SSDs.

The New Generation Of Optane Drives

After abandoning its line of development and manufacturing of 3D NAND memory, Intel continues to bet on the evolution of its different categories of 3D Xpoint memory under the Optane seal. This memory is used to increase work memory, complement DRAM, provide high-speed storage and accelerate workflows based on traditional HDD storage.

Experts say that this coming year will see the light of new Optane SSD units compatible with PCIe 4.0, focused on data centers and workstations and new applications entering this market. For example, Chia cryptocurrency mining and new categories of enterprise storage seek solutions faster than NAND, despite the higher cost.

SAS SSD Rise

With the arrival of new SSD models for SAS interfaces from some of the leading manufacturers in the industry, experts say that the SAS standard is not going to disappear in favor of other interfaces such as PCIe 4.0. They expect demand for SAS SSD drives like those launched by Samsung in April 2021 to increase this year. and write than SATA, enabling you to improve the capabilities of many legacy infrastructures in enterprises and data centers.

NVMe and NVMe-oF SSD

The development of the NVMe protocol and interface and its translation to networks via NVMe-oF is generating new lines of business in the storage industry, from hard drive manufacturers to AFA array providers. Since its appearance, this technology has gained a lot of presence in the enterprise storage market, and experts are convinced that in 2022 the sales of NVMe SSDs and certified NVMe-oF devices will grow in various market segments.

For example, in data centers, expanding NVMe-oF support to Ethernet, Infiniband and Fiber Channel networks will generate a drive to modernize storage networks. Most of the data in the facilities are stored on HDD drives and arrays and tape media. But the infrastructure for specific applications and use cases is being modernized with solid-state drives, and data centers will increasingly rely on this technology.

SSD Storage On The Edge

One of the expansion focuses of solid-state storage is the edge IT infrastructure. In many cases, speed and latency requirements are demanding, and low form factors are required for all computing components. Industry experts are working on multiple storage lines, including successfully combining SAS and NVMe technologies and developing compact, high-performance NVMe solutions specifically designed for edge computing.

This will quickly find its place in certain high-performance use cases, such as AI applications at the edge, increasingly in demand by companies in different industries, from telecommunications to manufacturing, healthcare or retail. In 2021, some progress has been made in this regard, and the industry expects further improvements in 2022.

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