Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2025. Read them in this 17th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Sebastien Jean, CTO,
Phison US
This year enticed an influx of GenAI and
enterprise use cases, introducing fresh, unique and data-intensive workloads for
organizations’ infrastructure to grapple with, particularly for data storage.
In 2025, there will be a spike in technological developments tailored to meet
this shift, outlined below:
1. Increased Focus on AI and Machine Learning:
-
AI Training Will Go Private: As the AI
buzz brought forth AI PCs, the security loopholes increased, and consumers have
started to become weary of allowing data to leave their control when utilizing
cloud services. This is coupled with the fact that cloud costs remain difficult
to predict and often bring surprises on the monthly bill when compared against on-premises
solutions. We will see a shift to close-looped AI systems where models are
trained locally and deployed directly to employee laptops to enable edge
inference. -
AI-Specific Storage Features: Storage controllers
might include specialized hardware or software to accelerate AI workloads,
particularly in edge devices where on-device processing is crucial. Imagine a
USB drive that can perform basic image recognition or natural language
processing tasks on the data it already contains thanks to its integrated AI
capabilities.
2. Enhanced Performance and Efficiency:
-
PCIe 5.0 and Beyond: Expect
wider adoption of PCIe 5.0 for SSDs, enabling even faster data transfer rates. On
the enterprise level, expect PCIe 6.0 to double the speeds to meet the demand
of AI workloads. These storage servers will likely integrate cold plate
conduction cooling or even immersive cooling which places the entire server in
a non-conductive liquid. -
NVMe Optimization: NVMe
(Non-Volatile Memory Express) will continue to be the dominant protocol for
SSDs, and they will be further optimized to reduce latency and improve overall
performance. -
Lower Power Consumption: As
always, there will be a push for greater energy efficiency, especially in
mobile devices and battery-powered applications. Controllers will play a key
role in minimizing power usage without sacrificing performance.
3. Tailored Use of Densities:
- Increased
Integration: We may see more highly integrated
solutions, with controllers and NAND flash memory packaged together in
smaller and more efficient form factors. This could be particularly
important for compact devices like wearables (i.e. smart glasses) where electronics
must conform to the shape of clothing and accessories.
4. Security Enhancements:
-
Hardware-Level Encryption: With the rapid
progress of quantum computing and the new post-quantum cryptography (PQC)
guidelines from NIST, expect to see more SSDs and other flash-based devices
with built-in hardware encryption capabilities, such as PQC digital signing, to
protect sensitive information. Given their parallelized nature, adoption should
be swift in the coming years. -
Secure Boot and Firmware Updates: SSDs will
likely incorporate more robust security features such as DICE/SPDM to allow an
SSD to cryptographically prove it is authorized and thus better prevent
unauthorized access and malicious firmware updates, ensuring the integrity and
trustworthiness of the device. This may look like self-encrypting drives (SEDs)
and include key features like isolated key management, side channel attack
detection and mitigation. SSDs will integrate detectors for tunneling electron
beams and manage internal power usage to make differential power
analysis much harder.
5. Customization and Differentiation:
-
Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC): We may
see more specialized application accelerators added into SSDs for use-case-specific
tasks like wear leveling, error correction, and performance optimization. This
could lead to longer lifespan, improved reliability, and faster speeds for SSDs
and other flash-based devices. -
Tailored Acceleration: Computational
Storage will evolve to add accelerators on to SSDs for highly specific tasks
that could be handled by the CPU but are offloaded to one or more SSD(s) to
handle as a background process without adding substantial cost or power
consumption. The accelerated SSDs can handle large volumes of data much faster,
all while consuming less power than traditional processors, something that will
be in high demand as AI use cases expand in 2025.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sebastien Jean is the Chief Technology Officer at Phison US, where he
focuses on developing technology strategy and building alliances with other
innovative companies. He also works closely with engineering teams to help
integrate new concepts into products. With 24 years of experience and over 30
filed patents, he has established himself as a thought leader in the storage
industry. Before joining Phison, he held senior technology positions at Micron,
SanDisk, and Western Digital. At Phison, he helped devise an iterative
technology roadmap that advances Security, AI, PCIe Gen 5, USB4, BGA NVMe,
Client Gaming Drives and Enterprise High-density E1.S. He earned a BS in
Computer Science at the University of Ottawa (Canada).
