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%.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced it has begun mass production of its one-terabit (Tb) quad-level cell (QLC) 9th-generation vertical NAND (V-NAND).

With the industry's first mass production of QLC 9th-generation V-NAND, following the industry's first triple-level cell (TLC) 9th-generation V-NAND production in April this year, Samsung is solidifying its leadership in the high-capacity, high-performance NAND flash market.

Western Digital, a leader in Flash and HDD data storage, is unveiling groundbreaking solutions and technology demonstrations at FMS 2024 that raise the bar for performance, capacity and efficiency for transformative AI Data Cycle workloads. These innovations cater to diverse market segments from hyperscale cloud to automotive and consumer storage. Attendees will also gain insights from a keynote address by Rob Soderbery, executive vice president and general manager of Western Digital's Flash Business Unit, on Tuesday at 3 PM. During the keynote, Soderbery will delve into the strategic advancements propelling the future of NAND, AI and data storage from the data center to the edge.

"As AI technologies advance and become increasingly embedded in the world around us, the demand for storage will only continue to grow," said Soderbery. "Western Digital's product and technology roadmaps are strategically aligned to ensure our customers have the most advanced, reliable solutions to stay ahead in the rapidly changing AI landscape. This holistic approach ensures that our customers receive the most power-efficient, high-performing and high-capacity solutions tailored to their specific needs. We are excited to showcase our full range of products and new technologies and demonstrate how they can transform AI now and into the future."

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2024. The Company posted KRW 74.07 trillion in consolidated revenue and operating profit of KRW 10.44 trillion as favorable memory market conditions drove higher average sales price (ASP), while robust sales of OLED panels also contributed to the results.

Memory Market Continues To Recover; Solid Second Half Outlook Centered on Server Demand
The DS Division posted KRW 28.56 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 6.45 trillion in operating profit for the second quarter. Driven by strong demand for HBM as well as conventional DRAM and server SSDs, the memory market as a whole continued its recovery. This increased demand is a result of the continued AI investments by cloud service providers and growing demand for AI from businesses for their on-premise servers.

DapuStor Corporation, a pioneer in high-performance data storage solutions, announced today that it is expanding its collaboration with Marvell to deliver breakthrough Flexible Data Placement (FDP) technology optimized for Quad-Level Cell (QLC) and Triple-Level Cell (TLC) Solid-State Drives (SSDs). This collaboration aims to revolutionize the storage industry by addressing the inherent challenges of QLC SSDs, enhancing their performance, endurance, and capacity, thereby providing a robust and cost-effective solution for data centers, cloud computing, and high-performance computing environments.

Unlocking the Potential of QLC SSDs with FDP Technology
QLC SSDs are renowned for their ability to store four bits of data per memory cell, offering significant capacity advantages and a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to other SSD types. Despite these benefits, QLC SSDs face challenges such as lower endurance and slower write speeds. The innovative FDP technology supported in the Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller with firmware level solution developed by DapuStor directly addresses these issues.

TrendForce's latest report on the memory industry reveals that DRAM and NAND Flash revenues are expected to see significant increases of 75% and 77%, respectively, in 2024, driven by increased bit demand, an improved supply-demand structure, and the rise of high-value products like HBM.

Furthermore, industry revenues are projected to continue growing in 2025, with DRAM expected to increase by 51% and NAND Flash by 29%, reaching record highs. This growth is anticipated to revive capital expenditures and boost demand for upstream raw materials, although it will also increase cost pressure for memory buyers.

Samsung has introduced its latest BM1743 SSD, boasting an impressive 61.44 TB of storage capacity. The BM1743 utilizes Samsung's seventh-generation 3D NAND (V-NAND) technology, featuring 176 layers of memory cells. This represents a significant leap from its predecessor, the BM1733, which debuted in 2020 with 96-layer technology and a maximum capacity of 32 TB. Performance-wise, the BM1743 doesn't disappoint. It delivers up to 1.6 million random read IOPS and 110,000 random write IOPS, with sequential read and write speeds of 7.2 GB/s and 2.0 GB/s, respectively. These figures position the drive as a highly capable solution for read-intensive workloads. Samsung claims that the new SSD offers double the sequential read and write speeds of its fifth-generation technology, with random reads quadrupling in performance. This advancement suggests that quad-level cell (QLC) SSDs are now approaching the performance levels of their triple-level cell (TLC) counterparts while offering superior storage density.

The BM1743 is available in the traditional U.2 form factor, with an E3.S variant supporting PCIe Gen 5 also in the lineup, thanks to the custom Samsung controller. Samsung has enhanced the durability and data retention capabilities of the BM1743. The new drive boasts an improved endurance rating of 0.26 drive writes per day (DWPD) throughout its warranty period, a notable increase from the BM1733's 0.18 DWPD. Additionally, the BM1743 extends its power-off data retention to three months, tripling the one-month period of its predecessor. In a hint of things to come, Samsung has suggested that a 122.88 TB model may be on the horizon, potentially doubling the capacity of the BM1743. This new offering puts Samsung in direct competition with Solidigm's D5-P5336, which has dominated the high-capacity SSD market for the past year. High-density storage solutions are becoming more important as AI and HPC tasks require and produce massive amounts of data.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it started sample shipments of 2 Tb (Tera bit) Quad-Level-Cell (QLC) memory devices with its eighth-generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology. This 2 Tb QLC device has the highest capacity in the industry, elevating storage devices to a new capacity point that will drive growth in multiple application segments including AI.

With its latest BiCS FLASH technology, Kioxia has achieved both vertical and lateral scaling of memory die through proprietary processes and innovative architectures. In addition, the company has implemented the groundbreaking CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology, which enables the creation of higher density devices and an industry-leading interface speed of 3.6 Gbps. Together, these advanced technologies are applied in the creation of 2 Tb QLC, resulting in the industry's highest capacity memory device.

TrendForce reports that while the enterprise sector continues to invest in server infrastructure—especially with the rising adoption of AI driving demand for enterprise SSDs—the consumer electronics market remains lackluster. This, combined with NAND suppliers aggressively ramping up production in the second half of the year, is expected to push the NAND Flash sufficiency ratio up to 2.3% in the third quarter, curbing the blended price hike to a modest 5-10%.

This year, NAND Flash prices saw a robust rebound as manufacturers kept production in check during the first half, helping them regain profitability. However, with a noticeable ramp-up in production and sluggish retail demand, wafer spot prices have dropped significantly. Some wafer prices are now over 20% below contract prices, casting doubts on the sustainability of future price hikes.

Kioxia presented a technology roadmap at the IWM 2024 conference in Seoul, projecting the development of 1,000-layer 3D NAND by 2027. This ambitious goal is based on extrapolating past trends, which saw NAND layers increase from 24 in 2014 to 238 in 2022. Kioxia's plan involves not only increasing layer count but also shrinking cell size and increasing bit levels from TLC (3 bits per cell) to QLC (4 bits per cell), and possibly even to PLC (5 bits per cell).

However, these advancements come with significant technical challenges. Etching the vertical connecting holes (through-silicon vias or TSVs) are harder to achieve and can lead to higher channel resistance. Kioxia proposes solutions such as using single-crystalline silicon instead of polysilicon and switching from tungsten to molybdenum to reduce resistance. They also suggest moving to multi-lane wordlines to reduce the die area needed for electrical connectivity.

Western Digital has released a new budget friendly SSD that got a serious jump in model number, since the company decided to call it the SN5000. Its predecessor is the SN580 launched just under a year ago and price wise, it's the better option of the two. The new SN5000 uses the same BiCS 5 TLC NAND as the SN580 on the 500 GB to the 2 TB SKU, but according to Anandtech, the 4 TB uses BiCS 6 QLC NAND. The SN5000 is still a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe drive, but the overall performance has been significantly improved. If we use the 1 TB SKU for comparison, then the sequential read speeds have gone up by 1 GB/s from 4150 MB/s to 5150 MB/s. The sequential write speed is up 750 MB/s from 4150 MB/s to 4900 MB/s.

As for random performance, the read IOPS are up from 600K IOPS to 730K IOPS and the write IOPS are up slightly from 750K to 770K. The 4 TB QLC SKU is said to deliver even better performance with the exception of the random read IOPS. The 1 TB SKU is said to have a write endurance of 600 TBW, but the 4 TB SKU only offers 1200 TBW. That's 0.33 drive writes per day (DWPD) for the 1 TB SKU vs. 0.16 DWPD for the 4 TB SKU, showing the weakness of the QLC NAND. A new feature for the SN5000 series compared to previous WD Blue NVMe drives is support for TGC Pyrite 2.01 encryption. The WD SN5000-series starts at US$70 for the 500 GB model, going up to US$80 for 1 TB, US$140 for 2 TB and topping out at US$280 for the 4 TB model. WD only seems to have the 500 GB model in stock, with all the others being available in 3-4 weeks time. All SKUs come with a five year warranty.

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%.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today launched the SM2322, the industry's fastest single-chip high-performance, low-power, and cost-effective solution for external portable SSDs, supporting up to 8 TB of storage and achieves unparalleled data transfer rates of 20 Gbps for storing and accessing large amounts of content seamlessly from AI smartphones, high-performance multimedia devices, and game consoles.

With the increase of AI-capable devices, high density and high-performance storage solutions are becoming more critical to consumers. Portable SSDs powered by the new SM2322 controller are the only solution that offers low-cost, high-density and high-performance, making it the ideal solution for these applications. Equipped with a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface with 20 Gb/s bandwidth and fully integrated hardware and software solution delivering peak sequential read and write transfer speeds of 2,100 MB/s and 2,000 MB/s, respectively, with up to 8 TB capacity, SM2322 powered high-performance portable SSDs enable an ultra-compact and lightweight form factor. The SM2322 supports the ProRes format and MFi specification for iPhone users while also being compatible with Windows, Android OS, and macOS, making it an ideal high-density, high-performance portable storage solution for AI smartphones, HD content creators, and gaming enthusiasts who require high-density, high-performance portable storage.

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.

TrendForce's latest forecasts reveal contract prices for DRAM in the second quarter are expected to increase by 13-18%, while NAND Flash contract prices have been adjusted to a 15-20% Only eMMC/UFS will be seeing a smaller price increase of about 10%.

Before the 4/03 earthquake, TrendForce had initially predicted that DRAM contract prices would see a seasonal rise of 3-8% and NAND Flash 13-18%, significantly tapering from Q1 as seen from spot price indicators which showed weakening price momentum and reduced transaction volumes. This was primarily due to subdued demand outside of AI applications, particularly with no signs of recovery in demand for notebooks and smartphones. Inventory levels were gradually increasing, especially among PC OEMs. Additionally, with DRAM and NAND Flash prices having risen for 2-3 consecutive quarters, the willingness of buyers to accept further substantial price increases had diminished.

SK hynix held a press conference unveiling its vision and strategy for the AI era today at its headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, to share the details of its investment plans for the M15X fab in Cheongju and the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster in Korea and the advanced packaging facilities in Indiana, U.S.

The event, hosted by theChief Executive Officer Kwak Noh-Jung, three years before the May 2027 completion of the first fab in the Yongin Cluster, was attended by key executives including the Head of AI Infra Justin (Ju-Seon) Kim, Head of DRAM Development Kim Jonghwan, Head of the N-S Committee Ahn Hyun, Head of Manufacturing Technology Kim Yeongsik, Head of Package & Test Choi Woojin, Head of Corporate Strategy & Planning Ryu Byung Hoon, and the Chief Financial Officer Kim Woo Hyun.

A few months ago, we covered proof of overclocking an off-the-shelf 2.5-inch SATA III NAND Flash SSD thanks to Gabriel Ferraz, Computer Engineer and TechPowerUp's SSD database maintainer. Now, he is back with another equally interesting project of modifying a Quad-Level Cell (QLC) SATA III SSD into a Single-Level Cell (SLC) SATA III SSD. Using the Crucial BX500 512 GB SSD, he aimed at transforming the QLC drive into a more endurant and higher-performance SLC. Silicon Motion SM2259XT2 powers the drive of choice with a single-core ARC 32-bit CPU clocked at 550 MHz and two channels running at 800 MT/s (400 MHz) without a DRAM cache. This particular SSD uses four NAND Flash dies from Micron with NY240 part numbers. Two dies are controlled per channel. These NAND Flash dies were designed to operate at 1,600 MT/s (800 MHz) but are limited to only 525 MT/s in this drive in the real world.

The average endurance of these dies is 1,500 P/E cycles in NANDs FortisFlash and about 900 P/E cycles in Mediagrade. Transforming the same drive in the pSLC is bumping those numbers to 100,000 and 60,000, respectively. However, getting that to work is the tricky part. To achieve this, you have to download MPtools for the Silicon Motion SM2259XT2 controller from the USBdev.ru website and find the correct die used in the SSD. Then, the software is modified carefully, and a case-sensitive configuration file is modified to allow for SLC mode, which forces the die to run as a SLC NAND Flash die. Finally, firmware folder must be reached and files need to be moved arround in a way seen in the video.

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.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass production for its one-terabit (Tb) triple-level cell (TLC) 9th-generation vertical NAND (V-NAND), solidifying its leadership in the NAND flash market.

"We are excited to deliver the industry's first 9th-gen V-NAND, which will bring future applications leaps forward. In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product," said SungHoi Hur, Head of Flash Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics. "Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation."

Renowned global memory brand Team Group Inc. is committed to providing consumers with diverse and optimal storage solutions. Today, it proudly unveils the Team Group MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 Solid State Drive, featuring the latest 3D QLC NAND technology, combining cutting-edge technology with the trend of demanding high storage capacity to meet daily system and file storage needs.

Team Group MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD utilizes the latest 3D QLC NAND, offering capacities of up to 4 TB. With the PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface and SLC Caching technology, it achieves maximum sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,400 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s, respectively. The MP44Q SSD operates with low power consumption, catering to all document processing and storage applications, significantly enhancing work efficiency. Paired with Team Group's exclusively patented graphene heat dissipation sticker, whose thickness is less than 1 mm, eliminating the potential for mechanical interference in any assembly, coupled with the native heat sink of the motherboard, such an arrangement effectively addresses the heat generated by high performance, extending the SSD's lifespan.

Micron Technology, Inc., today demonstrated its continued NAND technology leadership by announcing that its 232-layer QLC NAND is now in mass production and shipping in select Crucial SSDs, in volume production to enterprise storage customers and sampling to OEM PC manufacturers in the Micron 2500 NMVe SSD.

Micron 232-layer QLC NAND delivers unparalleled performance for use cases across mobile, client, edge and data center storage by leveraging these important capabilities:

• Industry-leading bit-density, up to 28% more compact than leading competitors' latest products
• Industry-leading NAND I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s, a 50% improvement over the prior generation
• 24% better read performance over the prior generation
• 31% better programming performance over the prior generation

YMTC X3-6070 3D QLC NAND flash chips are claimed by the company to offer endurance comparable to 3D TLC NAND flash chips from its competitors, ITHome reports. The company launched the new NAND flash chip at an event earlier this week. The X3-6070 is based on YMTC's 3rd Generation Xtracking architecture, and is 128-layer, which may not sound very competitive, given that other brands have moved up to 176-layer, or 232-layer; but YMTC says that the 128-layer design-choice is one of the four key ingredients to achieving high endurance for this chip.

The other three ingredients are innovations in the materials making up the NAND flash physical layer, new error-correction algorithms, and optimizations at the level of the SSD controller. The X3-6070 can sustain 4,000 P/E cycles per cell, YMTC claims, which is in league of contemporary 3D TLC NAND flash chips. It is able to do so, at lower costs from the QLC architecture. Besides the X3-6070, YMTC also launched a few first-party reference design SSDs that fully implement the controller-level optimizations needed for the chip to perform and endure as advertised.

TrendForce projects a strong 13-18% increase in Q2 NAND Flash contract prices, with enterprise SSDs expected to rise highest. Despite Kioxia and WDC boosting their production capacity utilization rates from Q1 this year, other suppliers have kept their production strategies conservative. The slight dip in Q2 NAND Flash purchasing—compared to Q1—does not detract from the overall market's momentum, which continues to be influenced by decreasing supplier inventories and the impact of production cuts.

eMMC demand is predominantly driven by Chinese smartphone brands, leading to a substantial boost in shipments from Chinese module makers as some suppliers have reduced their supply. Buyers are increasingly adopting solutions from module makers to meet production needs, enhancing the technological advancement of Chinese module factories and their outreach to premier clients. This trend is likely to increase the penetration of eMMC products among smartphone customers, with a projected 10-15% rise in eMMC contract prices in Q2 due to a sharp rebound in NAND Flash wafer prices.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, today introduced its UFS (Universal Flash Storage) 4.0 controller, the SM2756, as the flagship of the industry's broadest merchant portfolio of UFS controller solutions for the growing requirements of AI-powered smartphones as well as other high-performance applications including automotive and edge computing. The company also added a new, second generation SM2753 UFS 3.1 controller to broaden its portfolio of controllers now supporting UFS 4.0 to UFS 2.2 standards. Silicon Motion's UFS portfolio delivers high-performance and low power embedded storage for flagship to mainstream and value mobile and computing devices, supporting the broadest range of NAND flash, including next-generation high speed 3D TLC and QLC NAND.

The new SM2756 UFS 4.0 controller solution is the world's most advanced controller, built on leading 6 nm EUV technology and using MIPI M-PHY low-power architecture, providing the right balance of high performance and power efficiency to enable the all day computing needs of today's premium and AI mobile devices. The SM2756 achieves sequential read performance exceeding 4,300 MB/s and sequential write speeds of over 4,000 MB/s and supports the broadest range of 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash with densities of up to 2 TB.