Although the outbreak continues to disrupt the supply of SSD-related components in 2021, shipments through global distribution channels will grow at an annual rate of 11%. While production demand has increased, shipments have been impacted as wafer supply is too limited to meet order lead times. In response, Kingston adopted a limited supply strategy as product prices rose.

These findings show that, through Kingston’s global component sourcing strategy, the company is well ahead of its competitors given the global pandemic and chip shortages. The results solidified Kingston’s position as the clear leader in SSD production, as the second-ranked supplier accounted for only 8% of the overall channel market. As a category, third-party supplier (non-semiconductor) SSD manufacturers account for 58% of total shipments in 2021.

Growing demand for gaming SSDs with PCIe 4.0 NVMe continues to define the market landscape, driving module manufacturers to steadily shift from SATA to PCIe. TrendForce predicts that offering upgrades is likely to increase brand awareness and continue to increase shipments. In 2021, Kingston added two PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs to its portfolio, as well as the KC3000 and Kingston FURY Renegade SSDs.

These high-performance drives join Kingston’s line of client SSDs, enabling those who demand speed and reliability to handle intensive gaming and application workloads on desktops and laptops. TrendForce believes that price and the ability to provide comprehensive global production and sales services will be important factors for continuing to increase PCIe SSD shipments in the future.

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(Image from @relentlessly funny / intel bar)

Unlike the previous generation, the 13th generation of Raptor Lake-S desktop CPUs will increase the DDR5 memory controller (IMC) rate from 4800 to 5600 MT/s.

Second, the slide notes that the NVMe storage slot directly connected to the CPU is still PCIe 4.0 spec — even though AMD is planning to offer PCIe 5.0 support on the new generation of AM5 consumer platforms.

While motherboard manufacturers can manage to get 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the 700 series chipsets, the PCIe 5.0 graphics slots will also shrink from x16 to x8 when split between PCIe 5.0 NVMe storage devices.

TechPowerUp tests show that this will only have a single-digit (percentage point) impact on GPU performance. If you really don’t want to compromise, you might want to consider a competing AM5 platform with more bandwidth.

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