Behind the Price Hike of Storage Chips: Gaps and Opportunities in China's Storage Industry
发布时间：2026-02-06 13:36:46
Why are storage chips getting more expensive? What kind of storage is China lacking? The answers were revealed at the 2025 Data Storage Industry Conference.
I. AI Drives Storage Upgrades, Cost Surge Is Inevitable
In the AI era, data storage has become the "core of digital infrastructure." By 2025, China's data volume will account for 30% of the global total. Both computing power and electricity need to revolve around storage—intelligence starts with data, not GPUs.
AI's demands on storage have subverted traditions: training requires hundreds of TB-level bandwidth, microsecond-level latency, 100 million IOPS, and millions of concurrent operations (Huawei's public indicators). This goes far beyond the performance of ordinary file storage. The technical barriers of ultra-high-performance storage have driven up costs, directly leading to price increases.
II. Cold Data Turns Hot, Warm Storage Becomes the Biggest Shortcoming
Data is divided into three categories: cold, warm, and hot:
Hot data (chat records) relies on SLC NAND;
Cold data (old photos) depends on QLC NAND for archiving;
Warm data (contracts, surveillance videos) requires "non-loss + on-demand access"—it’s the core material for AI training.
As cold data turns hot and warm data surges, it has become the mainstay of storage. However, the media and systems supporting warm data are the only missing links in China's storage industry chain. While localization of CPUs, controllers, and complete machines is advancing, the basic technical route for warm storage remains a gap, which becomes more obvious as AI develops.
III. Industrial Growth Is Clear; Warm Storage Is a Strategic Opportunity
China's storage market has grown from 80 billion yuan in 2021 to 168 billion yuan in 2025. Behind the doubling:
Upstream: Over 10 domestic controller chips are mass-produced;
Midstream: Huawei and others lead enterprise-level storage innovation;
Downstream: Finance, government, and other industries widely use domestic storage.
The pain point is clear: weakness in basic theoretical innovation, and warm storage media and systems are the hardest nut to crack. The conference’s key conclusion: warm storage will be the biggest growth driver in the next decade—whoever breaks through will hold the "golden key" to AI data.
Conclusion
The conference signaled industrial alliance: complementing the high-performance storage industry chain with common standards. In the future, computing power may depreciate, but data won’t—only by rooting storage and AI "brains" in an independent industry chain can we become a true AI power.
I. AI Drives Storage Upgrades, Cost Surge Is Inevitable
In the AI era, data storage has become the "core of digital infrastructure." By 2025, China's data volume will account for 30% of the global total. Both computing power and electricity need to revolve around storage—intelligence starts with data, not GPUs.
AI's demands on storage have subverted traditions: training requires hundreds of TB-level bandwidth, microsecond-level latency, 100 million IOPS, and millions of concurrent operations (Huawei's public indicators). This goes far beyond the performance of ordinary file storage. The technical barriers of ultra-high-performance storage have driven up costs, directly leading to price increases.
II. Cold Data Turns Hot, Warm Storage Becomes the Biggest Shortcoming
Data is divided into three categories: cold, warm, and hot:
Hot data (chat records) relies on SLC NAND;
Cold data (old photos) depends on QLC NAND for archiving;
Warm data (contracts, surveillance videos) requires "non-loss + on-demand access"—it’s the core material for AI training.
As cold data turns hot and warm data surges, it has become the mainstay of storage. However, the media and systems supporting warm data are the only missing links in China's storage industry chain. While localization of CPUs, controllers, and complete machines is advancing, the basic technical route for warm storage remains a gap, which becomes more obvious as AI develops.
III. Industrial Growth Is Clear; Warm Storage Is a Strategic Opportunity
China's storage market has grown from 80 billion yuan in 2021 to 168 billion yuan in 2025. Behind the doubling:
Upstream: Over 10 domestic controller chips are mass-produced;
Midstream: Huawei and others lead enterprise-level storage innovation;
Downstream: Finance, government, and other industries widely use domestic storage.
The pain point is clear: weakness in basic theoretical innovation, and warm storage media and systems are the hardest nut to crack. The conference’s key conclusion: warm storage will be the biggest growth driver in the next decade—whoever breaks through will hold the "golden key" to AI data.
Conclusion
The conference signaled industrial alliance: complementing the high-performance storage industry chain with common standards. In the future, computing power may depreciate, but data won’t—only by rooting storage and AI "brains" in an independent industry chain can we become a true AI power.
