I saw more articles this week on death of HDD. Or that they
will be dead in a couple years. If we want to use aging analysis, they are mid 50s, past
midlife, not getting any younger but still active, healthy, and planning on watching
their grandchildren grow for a couple decades.
Recent data:
- HDD units outship SSDs more than 2:1
- HDD Bits outship SSDs 10:1
- HDD increase in bits shipped was larger than SSD increase in bits.
- HDD units are dropping and EBs shipped are increasing at modest rates.
What is happening:
- SSDs are increasing penetration in PCs at a modest rate. Hovering around 50% by end of year
- Performance enterprise HDDs are being replaced by SSDs. But 10K and 15K HDDs still are close in sales to Enterprise SSDs. Even though there is no technical reason for this.
- Nearline HDDs are growing in capacity shipped. SSDs are a small cache (<2% of capacity)
- Slow capacity storage is 99% HDD or Optical or Tape
Why:
- SSDs still cost 7-10X more than HDDs per Bit. It turns out we are storing bits? Who knew?
- HDD ASP decreased in last year, SSD ASP increased. That was not supposed to happen.
- Nearline and enterprise capacity needs are driving large increase in HDD capacities.
Prediction:
- SSD ASP per bit being lower than HDD is almost a fantasy now. 2025 for being “close/ 2x”
- SSD penetration into PCs will grow from ~50% to ~70% over the next 6 years
- SSD will continue to grow at steady, no tipping point, rate. SSDs will account for 25% of bits shipped by 2022… or 2024 …. Or 2026 … let’s just say a long time
Mark Webb
www.mkwventures.com
I agree and we must go to 3D HARD DISK TECHNOLOGIES to increase the areal density
ReplyDeleteMark, you're right on target. A week ago WD presented their view that SSDs would continue to cost 10X as much as HDDs through 2028.
ReplyDeleteSure wish I knew what Dim Niarchos meant by 3D Hard Disk Technologies!
Jim Handy
Flash-NAND has come to the limits of physical capabilities.
ReplyDeleteIncreasing the number of bits in a cell from 2 to 3 resulted in a significant increase in failure rates.
Decreasing the size of the transistors also causes a significant increase in failure rates.
Layering of layers in 3D-NAND is half-hearted. It also involves more failures, but not as much as increasing the number of bits in the cells or decreasing the size of the transistor.
SSD must wait for new RRAM chips.
3D Hard Disk Technologies:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040134
But in this case, commercial applications are still far away.