Cache SSD Shipments to Drive SSD Market Growth

News
By Douglas Perry
published

Solid state drives may finally go mainstream in the form of cache SSDs that are becoming an attractive technology for ultrabooks and possibly similarly thin notebooks that are expected to be pushed by AMD later this year.

IHS believes that shipments will climb from 881,000 units in 2011 to more than 121 million by 2015. 2012 shipments are forecast to soar to 25.7 million cache SSDs, which will complement traditional hard drives. A cache SSD cannot be used as the only mass storage device in a PC, but must be used in combination with a separate HDD.

“Intel is continuing to put its eggs into the ultrabook basket,” said Ryan Chien, research associate for memory & storage at IHS. “From the company’s introduction of the Nikiski reference design, to its announcement that more than 60 additional ultrabook designs will enter the market in time for the 2012 holiday season, Intel at CES showed that Ultrabooks have become the centerpiece of its mobile computing strategy."

Cache SSDs are a critical component of ultrabook design and are likely to extend their reach to competing devices with AMD processors, which will not be called ultrabooks, but provide a similar form factor.

Of the more than 25 million cache SSDs to be shipped this year, about 22 million units will be built into ultrabooks, IHS predicts. While cache SSDs had only a small presence in the storage industry in 2011, the market research firm says their impact in the coming years will become "increasingly significant". The cache drive segment is said to turn into the primary reason behind the mainstreaming of the solid state drives and is forecast to jump to 46 million units this year, up from 17 million in 2011.

Douglas Perry
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29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ap3x
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    BS, how does this have anything to do with the topic. Please stop with the spam and the scams that no one will fall for. TomsHardware should also do more to insure that this stuff does not get put into the comments. It really detracts from the conversation.
    Reply
  • I purchased an OCZ Synapse drive a while back and I can tell a worlds of difference between that and just using a WD Raptor.
    Reply
  • drwho1
    This "cache SSD's" should be embedded into Motherboards with a capacity of at least 120GB in the near future.
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    I assume this is the same or similar to hybrid SSD/HDD. Why isn't this idea killed already? For 95+% of people 64GB is plenty so just include those instead of a regular hard drive. They are cheap enough as they run about the same as you run of the mill hard drive. Especially after the price jump due to the flooding in Taiwan.

    Heck 32GB even 16GB would be plenty if Windows didn't bloat up so much after updates and temp files. Plus if software makers streamlined their software when releasing new versions rather than doubling the size with bloat for a handful of new features. From what I have seen most peoples data can fit on one DVD.
    Reply
  • elbert
    I would like a cache SSD but need it to daisy chain to the HD. The limited number of SATA connectors on many older desktops would benefit from the daisy chain approach. SATA original specs had daisy chaining and I wonder if it will ever catch on. This is the one advantage PATA still holds over SATA until its used.
    Reply
  • Chainzsaw
    I don't like the idea of cache SSDs. Whenever someone asks about it...I tell them to go for a straight SSD rather than a cache/HDD set up. The reason is cache SSD's need to "learn" your habits and it takes about 3-4 good sessions to get them up and running, whereas the straight SSD solution - it's always on and it always give you 100% performance.

    To me cache SSD's seem like a "band-aid" solution for bridging the digital divide between HDDs and SSD's, which in my opinion, would be better to go for the straight up SSD solution.
    Reply
  • southernshark
    Is see AMD doing well in this sector. Intel is trying to position itself at the high end range of thin notebooks, but let's be honest, Apple will always dominate that sector (well at least for the time being). So Intel is going to fail at taking the top end. Maybe it will be able to position itself as a slightly lower priced alternative to a Mac. But for myself, I'd rather have a Trinity model priced in the 500 dollar range.

    Reply
  • memadmax
    Like Chainzsaw said:

    Go all balls out SSD, or nothing at all.
    Reply
  • southernshark
    velocityg4I assume this is the same or similar to hybrid SSD/HDD. Why isn't this idea killed already? For 95+% of people 64GB is plenty.
    Ah negative. 64GB is nothing and even if you just download movies and take a lot of pictures, then you can fill that up fast. I mean I've had 8gb of just music on a computer. So no 64gb is not enough for most users. It sure as heck isn't enough for say... STUDENTS, who are going to be major targets for the sellers of such devices. Students would scoff at a computer with that kind of storage, since they could not load it up with music, videos, movies, games and random junk. So it would end up being a computer for boring white guys who don't download stuff. I don't think that's the target market.
    Reply
  • southernshark
    ChainzsawTo me cache SSD's seem like a "band-aid" solution for bridging the digital divide between HDDs and SSD's, which in my opinion, would be better to go for the straight up SSD solution.
    Its better if the cost comes down. Right now though AMD is forced to go after the $500- $600 dollar market so putting a 200 gb SSD in the computer is just not going to happen.
    Reply