According to research from Domo, 1.7 MB of data was created in each second for every person on earth. In 2021, this number has increased further and the amount of data collected today per minute is absolutely mind-boggling, isn’t it? So, while it may sound cliché, Data being the new oil is trite but true. The proliferation of data everywhere and the advent of new technologies like the Internet of Things and the 5G has led to new problems with the storage of data. Data storage companies and research institutions are working hard to resolve this problem.
Based on insights from Forbes, let’s take a quick look at the key trends that shall delineate the future of data storage.
A decline in HDD shipments
As the price of SSDs fall per gigabyte, HDD shipments in many major markets are declining. This decline is also increasing as the market has an oversupply of NAND flash. The price of HDDs per TB is more than 5x the price of client SSDs. The speed of SSDs coupled with the fact that many applications in client PCs would require no more than 2 TB of storage, increase the value proposition of SSDs. The percentage of PC storage using SSDs has increased due to the aforementioned factors.
Similarly, in performance enterprise and consumer applications, HDD shipments have declined further. A good example of this that the current generation of gaming consoles use SSDs, due to the various benefits they offer and also because newer engines utilize SSDs to transition across levels or worlds seamlessly. The total projected HDD shipments in 2021 are 214 million units, down by 15 percent from 2020.
The rise of NAND
The sales of NAND flash is projected to increase by 17 percent in 2021 over the preceding year, despite the pandemic. In 2020, the NAND flash memory market was valued at USD 46.62 billion, and it is expected to reach USD 85.36 billion by 2026. The key market drivers for the increase in NAND flash storage are the increased proliferation of smartphones, wearables, portable devices like tablets and laptops,cameras, and SMART electronics. Much of this growth is attributed to the increase in the average capacity of smartphones in 2021. Micron estimates that the average phone will have 142 GB of NAND flash storage, whereas flagships devices could have as much as 1 TB of flash storage.
Further, apart from the aforementioned devices, sensors, automotive systems, and medical devices also use NAND along with the embedded System on Chips. Another critical factor that is helping NAND is that its production facilities were not critically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic induced disruptions. Many of the NAND flash storage manufacturing plants are based in China and are highly automated. This has ensured no disruption in t he production of NAND flash storage unlike other electronic components.
Increased data density in SSDs
A few years ago, SSDs using SATA and even SAS interfaces were predominant. Post 2017, the market has witnessed an increased proliferation of high-performance SSDs using NVMe. Since 2018, NVMe SSDs have already surpassed the total capacity of SATA enterprise drives, and this trend is only expected to get stronger in 2021 and beyond. Today, Micron already produces an SSD with a capacity of 11 TBs and more. This capacity is only set to increase in 2021 and beyond. While there are significantly higher capacity HDDs available, they compromise on data rates vis-à-vis NVMe SSDs.
Today, an increasing number of workloads require NVMe SSDs for their high throughput, low latency, rapid storage array rebuild times, and storage density. NVMe today has become the very foundation of enterprise storage over other storage mediums. Thanks to NVMe, enterprise high-performance SSDs are available in various form factors that were not possible with other forms of storage. The promise of a high capacity in a diminutive package is certainly alluring.
The road ahead
2021 will see continued growth of storage in data center to on-premises, the edge and end points to support remote work and the growth of IoT and AI workloads. NVMe and NVMe-oF will be commonly used in storage system with continuing development of CXL, GenZ and other memory fabrics. Computational storage will demonstrate useful applications and storage security will be a big focus to secure valuable institutional data.
