AI hardware isn’t just about GPUs; the storage market is also running at full speed. Due to an impending shortage, TrendForce expects a price increase for enterprise SSDs.
Research firm TrendForce warns of a shortage in the HDD and SSD market. The lead times for nearline hard drives, the low-cost, high-capacity drives used by data centers, have increased to more than 52 weeks. This is said to be due to AI.
Unprecedented Demand Drives Prices Up
Western Digital has already warned customers in a letter that the demand for all its hard drives is “unprecedented”. The company is therefore raising prices to meet demand and avoid a shortage of HDDs and SSDs. Generative AI requires enormous amounts of nearline storage. These are data that are partly online and partly offline. They need to be directly accessible, but not as fast or responsive as with SSDs. Nearline storage is crucial for AI workloads: training data and backups are piling up and need to remain quickly available.
Scarcity Drives Hyperscalers towards SSDs
As HDD production capacity has been insufficient for years, large cloud providers are increasingly looking at SSDs for nearline data. These have lower energy consumption and better performance, but the cost is four to five times higher than hard drives, writes Tom’s Hardware.
TrendForce expects suppliers to develop new SSDs for nearline applications to save costs, but also that in the short term, prices of enterprise SSDs will rise. Those who want to purchase additional storage would do well not to wait too long.