Key Excerpts for TrendForce’s “Compuforum 2022: Diverse Market Opportunities Generated by Applications of Cyber-Physical Systems” Online Seminar

TrendForce is hosting the online seminar “Compuforum 2022: Diverse Market Opportunities Generated by Applications of Cyber-Physical Systems” on the 15th this month, where analysts of the market intelligence firm are invited to delve into industrial tendencies pertaining to memory, server, and data center.

New Cloud Era Sculpted by Global Hyperscale Establishment

Regarding the establishment of global hyperscale data centers, the alterations of industrial structure and the sizable improvement in server computing units have yielded a development in server architectures that is contrasting to traditional application services, and further propelled server demand for the industry. Among which, the attainment of data centers has become the major drive for DRAM demand in recent years, occupying more than 30% of annual consumption over the DRAM market. TrendForce estimates the overall server DRAM wafer starts to arrive at a record high ratio in 2025 at around 40%, and replace mobile DRAM as the spotlight for suppliers then.

DDR5 Benefitting AI Applications alongside Next-Gen Memory Products upon Availability in 2H22

Existing memory solutions, regardless of DRAM or NAND Flash, have succumbed to the physical constrains of continuously shrinking processes, meaning that it is now even more difficult in constantly improving performance and optimizing cost. DDR5 that will be introduced to the market during 2H22 will not only offer a faster data transmission, but also serves as a more convenience option for the computing architecture of AI and DL (Deep Learning). In addition, the market is seeing emergence of new memory variations, such as HBM, that are conforming to the computing requirements of HPC and AI. Traditional server architectures, upon entering the AI era, are no longer able to fulfill computing demand, and are thus incorporated with accelerators in order to improve computing performance, where CXL can even optimize the interconnection between CPUs and accelerators. TrendForce believes that the integration of DDR5, HBM, accelerators, and CXL should dismantle the hardware bottlenecks necessary to AI computing, and further stimulate a new wave of server growth.

NAND PCIe to Elevate New Values of Data Centers from the Help of Intergenerational Computing

Storage application from the server field will become the major consumption of NAND Flash in the future, with Samsung, Solidigm, and Micron being the three prominent suppliers, and the interface will focus on EDSFF (E1.S/L) in the hope of obtaining better transmission utilization that would further optimize AI and DL applications. TrendForce also noticed that the QLC architecture is becoming increasingly popular owing to its effectiveness in lowering the cost unit capacity, which allows consumers to enjoy faster transmission speed with a price tag that is close to traditional HDD. However, the particular architecture is not necessarily flawless as it evidently trails behind the current mainstream TLC architecture pertaining to durability, and that is the reason why DRAM and NAND will eventually establish related solutions, such as products adopted with the CXL interface, so as to achieve a balance between performance and cost. In the long term, the development of storage technology will derive multiple products in order to adapt to performance or cost-oriented requirements, which at the same time erode the survival space of traditional HDD.

Demand for Global IT Asset Disposition Emerges amidst Explosive Growth in Servers

The continuous progress in digital transformation among businesses, coupling with how the consumer market is now even more dependent on e-commerce and online streaming services, have further expedited the construction of global data centers. The cloud computing field, due to the unabated climbing demand for AI model training, has ramped up the computability of server chips, as well as accelerated the iteration of computing platforms, where a large volume of server equipment, adopted with the previous generation computing technology, that is installed in partial institutions or CSPs with intensive data, must now be phased out, which stems out the demand for IT asset disposition (ITAD). TrendForce commented that ITRenew, Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS), and TES are the current leaders in the global ITAD market.

SLS has been minimizing the area of ITAD storage facilities, expanding the cooperative network with local contractors such as waste recyclers, and lowering the maintenance cost of facilities in recent years, and turned to investing additional resources into the on-site packing services of data centers, as well as improving the flexible dispatching of resources. ITRenew and TES were respectively acquired or partially acquired by information security service leaders Iron Mountain and South Korea-based SK Group during 1Q22 and 2Q22, where the ITRenew and Iron Mountain alliance will continue to provide integrated services of “software and hardware assimilation” for the ITAD market, while SK, relying on its strong capital foundation, will penetrate into the ITAD market by taking advantages of TES’ global distribution bases, where the two are anticipating that data center businesses would become robust growth dynamics for the ITAD market in the future.

The “Compuforum 2022: Diverse Market Opportunities Generated by Applications of Cyber-Physical Systems” online seminar (English session only) will be available for viewing on the website of TrendForce on June 15th (Wed). TrendForce analysts Mark Liu, Bryan Ao, Caron Ju, and Alex Chen are invited to delve into various trends such as memory, server, and data center at this seminar.