According to the latest research from TrendForce, the massive data volumes generated by AI are impacting global data center storage infrastructure. Traditional nearline HDDs, which serve as the foundation for mass data storage, are experiencing supply shortages, driving high-performance, high-cost SSDs to gradually become the market focus, particularly with large-capacity QLC SSD shipments potentially experiencing explosive growth in 2026.

In traditional data center storage tiered architecture, HDDs maintain their dominant position as the mainstream storage solution for "cold data" due to their extremely low cost advantage per unit storage capacity (GB). Cold data includes backup files, historical records, and other infrequently accessed data that requires long-term archival storage. As Inference AI applications expand, cold data storage demand is rapidly escalating. SSDs, with their high-speed read/write performance, primarily handle frequently accessed "hot data" and "warm data."

Comparing QLC SSDs with nearline HDDs, the former not only delivers superior performance but also saves approximately 30% in power consumption. TrendForce notes that major global HDD manufacturers have not planned production line expansions in recent years, making them unable to timely meet the sudden, massive storage demands stimulated by AI. Current NL HDD delivery times have dramatically extended from the original several weeks to over 52 weeks, accelerating the expansion of CSPs' storage gap.

North American CSPs have already planned to expand SSD adoption for warm data applications, but due to the severity of this HDD shortage, CSPs are even beginning to consider using SSDs for cold data. However, moving toward large-scale deployment requires first addressing the dual challenges of cost and supply chain.

TrendForce indicates that for CSPs to implement QLC SSDs in cold data storage, they must consider modifications to data management algorithms, software stack adaptation, and precise calculations of total cost of ownership (TCO), with the necessity to maintain price floors to achieve cost balance. For SSD suppliers, while this wave of order transfers represents an excellent opportunity to improve profit structure, due to limited capacity for high-capacity products, suppliers will not be willing to significantly reduce prices.

Therefore, buyers and sellers are expected to engage in price negotiations, driving overall Enterprise SSD contract prices to increase 5-10% quarter-over-quarter in Q4 2025.