The Zhitong Finance App learned that TrendForce Jibang Consulting's research shows that US cloud vendors have increased their demand for enterprise SSDs (enterprise SSDs) over the past two weeks, mainly because major CSPs are accelerating the expansion of enterprise SSD deployment scale and application scenarios. It is worth noting that this wave of demand is not only focused on high-performance TLC products, but QLC products with lower cost per unit capacity and higher efficiency are also the main source of growth momentum.
Looking at the recent pull-up momentum, the total number of Enterprise SSD orders in the fourth quarter is expected to break through the high of the third quarter, showing a strong trend of continuous upward growth. This has also significantly increased the original manufacturer's capacity allocation and bargaining dominance in the enterprise-level market, further consolidating the foundation for enterprise SSD prices to maintain an upward trajectory.
Deepening AI applications and technology diffusion, from Agentic AI to KV Cache Offload
TrendForce Jibang Consulting pointed out that the driving factors behind this wave of enterprise SSD demand have extended from initial LLM training to more specific AI implementation applications. With the construction of autonomous agent AI (Agentic AI) systems becoming more and more popular, the system's demand for massive real-time data extraction and caching has multiplied. The scale of application of QLC storage technology in vector databases (Vector Databases) has been scaled up simultaneously, making it the best cost-effective solution for carrying such unstructured data. It is foreseeable that in the future, the popularity of Agentic AI technology will further boost the penetration rate of QLC Enterprise SSDs in the North American cloud and data center (data center) sector.
On the other hand, observing the dynamics of Chinese manufacturers, the AI innovation architecture represented by DeepSeek is promoting the application of high-capacity QLC Enterprise SSDs in the KV Cache Offload mechanism. By moderately offloading cache data from the memory to a high-speed and high-capacity QLC Enterprise SSD, model reasoning efficiency can be improved at a lower cost. There is also an opportunity for the future market to expand the use of QLC Enterprise SSD products.
