Solid state storage may not have been probably the most thrilling tech sector to comply with in 2020, nevertheless it definitely had its fair proportion of recent applied sciences arriving, consumer-friendly value drops, and a significant company acquisition deal.
COVID-19 Impact on Supply and Demand
Going into 2020, most analysts had been predicting {that a} scarcity of NAND flash reminiscence would develop and drive up SSD costs, particularly within the second half of the 12 months. The COVID-19 pandemic upended these predictions. Early on within the pandemic, it was anyone’s guess whether or not provide or demand can be extra strongly affected. By the center of the 12 months, it was clear that the fabs in Asia the place many of the world’s NAND flash is manufactured had been in a position to climate the pandemic with no vital drop in manufacturing capability.
The way of life shifts to work-from-home and on-line studying drove some demand for brand spanking new PCs and elevated server capability for on-line providers, however the broader financial affect of the pandemic largely outweighed these results and harm total demand. The web impact is that, opposite to pre-pandemic predictions, SSD demand is low sufficient that the NAND flash market has an oversupply and costs are in decline. This is predicted to proceed by no less than the primary quarter of 2021 with a 10-15% drop in NAND flash reminiscence costs. The affect on retail SSD costs shall be considerably dulled by the truth that provides are tight for SSD controllers and another elements, which can push SSD producers to focus a bit extra on high-capacity high-end drives, particularly datacenter drives.
Gaming Consoles Switch to NVMe
Perhaps the largest shift in shopper storage this 12 months was the arrival of gaming consoles constructed from the bottom as much as make the most of stable state storage. Consoles usually set up the baseline {hardware} capabilities that video games and sport engines are designed to focus on. For over 15 years, this has meant that AAA video games are designed to run off onerous drives. Even as SSDs have develop into prevalent in gaming PCs, it has till not too long ago been unthinkable for a sport to listing a SSD as a part of its minimal system necessities. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have now raised the baseline storage efficiency from that of a mechanical onerous drive to a NVMe SSD, and sport builders are actively inspired to take benefit that further efficiency. Furthermore, the consoles embody varied different {hardware} options meant to enhance the brand new console SSDs; we gave you the rundown on these options and their implications again in June.
So far, the console transition to NVMe storage has had little affect on the PC market or PC gaming—however the consoles have solely been delivery for a short time, and sport builders are nonetheless studying how one can adapt to the brand new freedoms granted by quick storage. This console storage transition shall be having extra affect on PCs over the following few years. Microsoft is already working to adapt their new Xbox storage APIs into DirectStorage for Windows, and it will not be lengthy earlier than most AAA video games require SSDs. For gaming PCs, together with a NVMe SSD shall be simply as necessary as together with a discrete GPU.
Read More: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher In A New Era of Gaming
PCIe 4.0 Gaining Momentum
The transition to PCIe 4.Zero began in the course of 2019 with the debut of AMD’s Ryzen 3000 processors. On the storage aspect of that transition, SSD controller vendor Phison led the best way with their E16 controller. But in 2019 and most of 2020, PCIe 4.Zero storage remained a distinct segment market section, solely out there on new high-end desktops and with SSDs that provided solely marginal efficiency enchancment over the most effective PCIe three drives however carried a lot increased value tags.
All of Phison’s opponents determined to take their time with the PCIe…
