Update for January 2016... so when ARE SSDs going to Replace HDDs???

When will SSDs Replace HDDs? … an Update from August!

We presented a summary at Flash Memory Summit of predictions and reality for the past 3 years on SSD penetration. We updated study with more details and data.

From August presentation the following key points were made:

•  SSD have not penetrated into either enterprise or client market as much as expected. A broad number would show <25% penetration into unit sales
• The reasons are
• price per GB for client… people won’t pay 4-6x the price even for better performance
• slow changing ecosystem in enterprise. Even where price per IOP is what matters, like 15k HDD market (and SSDs are cheaper in this metric), SSDs are not winning.
• Growth is slow and steady… almost linear with no tipping point coming

The Update

•   Lower prices, 3D NAND and 3D XPoint have increased the hype. We have cost numbers for SSDs, 3D NAND, 3D XPoint and other ReRAM/PCM memories to show cost and performance metrics for next 3 years. HDD costs as well. Will the cost per IOP and cost per GB change adoption 2018?
•  Growth continues to be steady. Even articles with titles like “SSDs are making HDDs obsolete” show growth in market share of ~5-10% per year… same as the past 4 years. Nothing tipped!  
•  Pure Tablets sales are dropping significantly, 2:1 and new notebook forms are taking over high end notebook markets. The use of SSDs in high end Notebooks and 2:1s vs mainstream Notebooks is dramatically different.
• 10K and 15K HDD performance enterprise sales are not dropping …. This market was supposed to be dead! How does it survive??

The Prediction

•  In client: Cost today is still prohibitive for SSD to become dominant. Dominate penetration requires some combination of 3 changes to happen by 2018. The changes involve Cloud use, SSD architecture changes for cost, and consumer preferences
• In Enterprise: SSDs are great for caching. They have the best cost per IOP. So increased penetration makes sense. 

• The extreme performance, lowest latency, accelerator market will grow in one of two directions depending on use of DRAM, DIMMS, New NVM, and NAND Cost
• The Historic/legacy Performance HDD Market will continue its slow evolution. But two changes to the ecosystems allow quicker penetration by SSDs,
• The capacity storage market will not see widespread SSD replacement of HDD. But there are 3 possible scenarios options that allow significant use of SSDs/NAND memory.

#storagevisions, #CES2016

Mark Webb, MKW Ventures, mark@mkwventures.com