14 DAY TRIAL // Pulled out straight from sci-fi movies, numbers like these seem to be tossed around by Samsung when talking about the potential of SSDs by 2020.
The Korean company is very excited about the potential NAND flash SSDs when thinking about the future, and although we're talking of barely 5 years ahead, Samsung thinks hundreds of exabytes will be the norm in SSD production in 2020.
Samsung also adds that the total output of flash memory will probably encompass less than 10 percent of storage capacity the industry will need at the time. During its SSD Global Summit 2015, Samsung thinks that the NAND flash industry will increase its production in the next 5 years reaching 235 EB or exabytes, whereas 1 exabyte means 1 million terabytes.
In order to make the public lay off the critique, Samsung provided the summit audience with some present-day facts: by the end of 2015 the NAND flash industry managed to build 84 exabytes, so we're not really that far from that potential target.
HDD storage standard will take longer to replace than previously thought
According to PC Watch, the increased fabrication of NAND flash bits will be caused by multiple factors, chief among these being the increased proliferation of V-NAND drives which will see the prices for SSDs drop further. Wearable electronics, tablets and laptops will clearly contribute to this increased proliferation of NAND SSDs. Samsung even claims that SSDs will use more NAND flash memory bits than mobile devices starting 2017.
However, Samsung states one truth that it may be easily misunderstood. NAND drives, although the norm by 2020 among SSDs, will constitute less than 10% of the storage needed by the industry at that time.
That doesn't even come close to half of all the storage devices used across the world, so in effect it shouldn't be impressive at all. In a way Samsung admitted that HDDs will still be the dominant storage device by far even in 2020, and also even when they are experiencing a steady decline in sales for years.
