HDD Trends and Impacts

 Multiple reports are coming out from industry analysts (Trendfocus, IDC, IHS, Gartner) on the HDD market for past year. Some interesting numbers on Units, Density, Cost, and Markets:

• HDD Units relatively flat in 400Mu unit range for past 2 years (down from 2010 peak ~600M Units) . Less PCs sold and SSD encroachment in notebooks reduced TAM. 
• HDD Capacity increasing 15% per year or more
• HDD Mission critical (10K+15K) units down 25% from peak in 2012, Revenue down 50%
• HDD Mission critical  (10K+15K) capacity is flat for past 2 years
• HDD PC Capacity is relatively flat for past few years. CE and Enterprise Capacity is up.
• HDD Cost and price per TB is down 12%+ per year. 500GB HDDs sell for less than $30 to PC OEMs

Lots more data available and how this affects the NAND/SSD market over the next few years

Some thoughts:

• 10K and 15K market should be dead. SSDs are better and lower price per IOP... but its a slow death (Even though HDD makers 
• SSDs should be this entire market with 25M units or more per year
• SATA/PCIe will take this over in next 3-5 years

• HDD Nearline market is growing rapidly with little impact from SSDs expected. >6TBs per drive at a cost well below $30/TB and costs dropping 10-15% per year. The date explosions is driving this market for storage

• Now that NAND shortage is over, we expect SSDs resume steady penetration into PC market. Most PCs still ship with HDDs today. 

• We are still several years away from SSD units outselling HDD Units . 10+ years from SSD capacity outselling SSD capacity

Mark Webb
www.mkwventures.com

Relative Costs for NAND, ZNAND, Optane Memory

What are the relative costs for the memory types in these new SSDs? We have the estimates below!
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                 







Caveats:

• These are costs, not prices. Margins vary
• These are approximate costs in 2018 for the memory in key products
• All are relative to HDD costs

HDD is of course the cost leader... everything else falls into a spectrum of costs. Some products are more mature than others and that affects their cost today

Actual values, assumptions, prices and how these will change dramatically over the next two years is available as well

Mark Webb
www.mkwventures.com

How much will Persistent Memory Options Cost in 2019?

I recently attended the Persistent Memory Summit 2018. 

It was an outstanding conference and I was able to learn a lot on what some options for persistent memory configurations will be in 2019 and beyond. Spoiler Alert: Optane DIMMS are involved in both cheapest and most expensive options

 I converted it to customer cost for Storage/Memory components in the system for some typical options including a medium SSD and big HDD

If you disagree, please tell me the correct answer (hint: Facebook, Intel, Dreamworks... my email is below). 

I have specifics on why these options are probable, what the actual speeds are, and the costs for each components. Contact us for more info and system requirements estimates

Background Assumptions

• DRAM is fastest, Optane is somewhat slower  but good enough. DRAM acts as cache for Optane DIMMS (Optane requires DRAM, it doesn't replace DRAM)
• NVDIMM-N is DRAM speed... and DRAM density ... and more expensive than DRAM. But Persistent!
• You still need to store stuff and HDD is about 50x cheaper than Optane, 10x cheaper than SSD

The Hypothetical Costs to a end user for some typical options

• If you want TONS of addressable memory, Optane DIMMS might be the answer
• If you want speed and persistence, NVDIMM-N might be the answer
• If you want max speed and not persistence DRAM only might be the answer
• If you are cheap: 64GB of DRAM plus an off brand SSD from Craigslist will do the trick

Just an opinion!

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

Persistent Memory Summit 2018

Persistent Memory Summit 2018

Today is the summit that brings together many of the people working in persistent memory to discuss the future, standards, and technologies.

There will be lots of discussions on standards, programming models, and changes to computing. But there are a few pragmatic questions we are getting answers to as well this week




1) Today's Technologies: NVDIMM-N is here today and is in use in many applications. How big is the market, who are the leaders, and how fast is it growing?

2) Tomorrow's Technologies: Intel has been talking about Optane DIMMs for a long time. But customers are still waiting for production DIMMs and the CPU to go with it. Are we on track for Sep 2018 availability

3) Software to take advantage of these technologies can be slow to come out. When are the leaders planning on being able to fully take advantage of large persistent memory. If I have 1-2TB of Memory... are we ready for it?

4) Overall Market... if we look at NVDIMMS from all technologies... when do we get to the bit shipments being same as DRAM DIMMS? density is 10x... so it should be quick!


Mark Webb
www.mkwventures.com

SSD Growth Forecast in Compute Markets: Enterprise/Datacenter

Datacenter/Enterprise: SSDs provide 30% of units and  15% of capacity sold in 2017. 

Projections for ALL SSDs and applications from a number of outlets are 15-19% unit growth and 15-20% Revenue growth. We have all the details behind those numbers if you want them but some specifics on SSD/HDD ratio on Enterprise/Datacenter

SSD% of total Enterprise HDD+SSD unit sales finished 2017 just around 30%, climbing from 23% in 2016. For 2018 we predict continued growth to 36%.  Due to nearline and Cold storage HDD dominance, SSDs provide <15% of the new capacity sold in the enterprise today. 

Note: SSDs are less than 15% of NEW capacity sold. they are less than 10% of total capacity

By Application:

• SSDs replace mission critical 10K/15K HDDs at a very fast rate as cost per IOPs is equivalent or better. SSDs should replace 90% of this market eventually
• SSDs in server markets are growing steadily in PCIe and SATA applications
• SSDs continue to make little impact in nearline and cold storage applications
• TLC utilization will support SSD growth in all applications

Reasons for methodical increase:

• SSD $/GB Pricing is still 10x HDD Pricing in most enteprise applications
• SSD Prices are dropping but so are HDD prices. no crossover coming
• Anything with $/IOPS Metric is moving to SSD. Anything with $/GB Metric (Nearline/Cold) is staying HDD
• Enterprise customers are slow to move and change configurations. 10K/15K HDDs still sell even though there is limited rationale for using them over SSDs

For details on attach rates, SSD pricing, HDD pricing, and cost assumptions over the next 5 years, contact us!

From WDC presentation 90% of data is still HDD in 2022:

Side note: Optane (p4800x) and Fast NAND applications (Z-NAND and products from WDC/Hynix/Toshiba) will impact server NVMe SSDs sales for fastest applications. The Jury is still out on how much of a premium customers are willing to pay over NAND SSDs. 

www.mkwventures.com

SSD Growth Forecast in Compute Markets: Client Notebooks

SSD sales are growing and attach rate is increasing in all compute markets. The question is: How Fast? How Much?     

Projections for SSDs from a number of outlets are 15-19% unit growth and 15-20% Revenue growth. We have all the details behind those numbers if you want them but some specifics on attach rates. 

Client Notebook SSD attach rate finished 2017 just around 50%, climbing from 20% in 2014. For 2018 we predict continued steady growth fueled by SSD/NAND price drops. The average attach rate for 2018 will exceed 55%  ... growing to almost 70% by end of 2019..... if NAND Prices start to drop as expected. No tipping point is coming.... 

Reasons for methodical increase: 

• SSD $/GB Pricing is still 8x HDD Pricing
• SSD Prices are dropping but so are HDD prices. SSD $/GB multiplier is 3x HDD in 2021
• Many people still want large capacity drives
• SSD performance is better than HDD, but it is not required for any application

For details on attach rates, SSD pricing, HDD pricing, and cost assumptions over the next 5 years, contact us!

Side note: at this point, we dont see an impact of Optane SSDs or Memory on these numbers. Optane doesn't impact notebook market at this time. See Desktop report summary for impact on that market.

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

Optane DIMMS: What will we learn in next 6 months?

This past week Intel announced more Optane SSDs for Client and Enterprise. These are nice products, faster than NAND based products in most metrics, and available at 2-3x the prices of NAND based products. But these products are not the highest and best use of 3D Xoint. And Samsung has announced competing products.

In a separate announcement, Navin Shenoy stated that Optane DIMMs will be available in servers in 2H 2018 and that the market could be $8B for Optane DIMMS in 2021. This is far higher than all other Optane or 3D Xpoint applications combined. Optane is meant for DIMMS.

Over the next few months, we will investigate and learn a few things that will confirm or reject that $8B opportunity that Intel announced.

• What is in a Optane DIMM? How much DRAM is onboard? That will determine the cost.
• How fast will an Optane DIMM be? People say it works at DDR4 speed. Is the speed really the same speed as DDR4 Server DIMMs?
• What will the price be? Some companies will want to max out server memory and Optane DIMMs will have high capacity. But most companies will make trade off decisions on price vs performance. Initial comment from Intel was "half the price". As long as its the same speed as server DRAM DIMMs that will be game changing. If its slower .... hmmm.
• What is the optimal DRAM DIMM to Optane DIMM ratio in a server configuration? 1:1? 2:1? 1:2? 1:12?
• How many applications will have been optimized for persistent memory by end of 2018? All of the above comments basically ignore the "persistence" aspect. NVDIMMs have been around for a while and only 1-2% of servers are using them. Will Optane change this? 

Fortunately, we will have answers to all these questions before modules are available in 2H 2018. I am sure Intel will share all the details and specifics! Wait .... what??? OK... you will have to get the details from us instead.

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com