TrendForce’s newest findings point out that over the subsequent two years, AI infrastructure will primarily concentrate on high-performance inference companies. As conventional high-capacity HDDs face important shortages, CSPs are more and more sourcing from NAND Flash suppliers, boosting demand for nearline SSDs designed particularly for inference AI and catering to pressing market necessities.

NAND Flash distributors are rapidly validating and adopting nearline QLC NAND Flash merchandise to handle the provision hole. QLC expertise presents larger storage density at decrease prices, making it important for assembly large-capacity demand. 

Suppliers are additionally growing QLC SSD manufacturing, with capability utilization anticipated to steadily develop via 2026. The demand is prone to persist into 2027 as inference AI workloads broaden, resulting in tight provide situations for enterprise SSDs by 2026.

TrendForce highlights that to boost the competitiveness of nearline SSDs in AI storage and higher change HDDs, future merchandise will concentrate on growing capacities and reducing costs. 

Producers are engaged on new nearline SSDs that surpass mainstream HDDs in capability, supply higher price effectivity, and considerably minimize energy consumption.

Diversification of NAND Flash purposes
Past inference AI, NAND Flash suppliers are additionally specializing in AI coaching purposes by introducing Excessive Bandwidth Flash (HBF) merchandise, dividing the trade into two primary expertise teams. 

The primary is led by SanDisk, which is creating a hybrid design that integrates HBM with HBF. This strategy seeks to stability giant capability and excessive efficiency to satisfy the twin wants of knowledge throughput and storage in AI mannequin coaching.

The opposite group is led by Samsung and Kioxia, specializing in storage-class reminiscence applied sciences like XL-Flash and Z-NAND. These supply a extra inexpensive different to HBM, aiming to draw a wider vary of consumers.

TrendForce emphasizes that the rivalry amongst expertise routes is driving NAND Flash past typical storage, integrating it extra deeply with AI computing. This means a future with extra various NAND Flash purposes.

Supply: TrendForce, Taiwan.