HBM’s & DRAM’s Importance Is Waning; Here’s The Silent Upgrade AI Giants Are Racing To Buy Before the Next Big Wave Hits

As hyperscalers continue to increase their massive investments to boost capacity, there’s a growing realization that risks their lofty ambitions: power consumption, physical space constraints, and rising prices of HBM and DRAM memory that’ll only creep up due to stagnant capacity. Fortunately, a new report dives into a new component that’ll help accelerate hyperscalers’ goals, and with the ever-expanding capacity, this part will become a key player in this particular industry.

Samsung & SK hynix are leading the high-capacity QLC eSSD market, helping to lift the burden from AI data centers as HBM and DRAM become the inference bottleneck

We’ve previously reported that Samsung has ramped up production of V10 NAND flash for NVIDIA to contain the overwhelming growth of AI GPUs and data centers through a technology called Context Memory Storage (CMX). According to ZDNet, the same focus is now converged on the enterprise SSD market, where memory makers Samsung and SK hynix look to help hyperscalers reduce server space and power consumption while smiling all the way to the bank.

These manufacturers are now leading from the front in high-capacity QLC-based eSSDs. While QLC (Quad-Level Cell) SSDs are less durable than TLC (Triple-Level Cell) and MLC (Multi-Level Cell) drives, they can house more capacity per drive while costing less, conserving massive amounts of space for hyperscalers. To minimize the level of wear on these drives, customers can opt to place larger orders, filling their datacenters to the brim.

With these eSSDs, the burden on GPU memory for storing tons of temporary context data known as Key-Value (KV) cache will be substantially reduced, helping the graphics chips preserve their launch cycles while also reducing daily operational costs of AI datacenters. TrendForce reports that eSSD contract prices have risen by about 80 percent as this component is slowly evolving from a simple storage medium to one that offloads and supports taxing AI workloads.

Alongside eSSDs, their storage controllers are also given the same importance, with Pado said to become a beneficiary due to this staggering growth, just like Samsung and SK hynix. The only downside, which readers are most probably aware of, is that growing demand for storage by hyperscalers will lead to massive price increases, meaning that consumer SSDs, which have already become expensive due to the aftermath of the DRAM crisis, will become unaffordable for the masses.

News Source: ZDNet

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