AI deployments to drive investments in storage, networking, and cloud infrastructure
The race for making perfect hardware to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) applications is heating up and many companies are jumping in with their products and solutions.
According to a new report from Tractica, of the three key parts of hardware infrastructure – compute, networking, and storage – compute has made significant progress in the last couple of years. The other two areas, storage and networking, are lagging behind and have yet to see major innovations pertaining to AI applications.
In the next few years, however, more R&D will go into these areas and new products will emerge that are designed specifically for AI.
Tractica forecasts that the total worldwide market for AI-driven hardware and software infrastructure will grow from $3.5 billion in 2016 to $115.4 billion by 2025. This market consists of six key segments:
- Cloud infrastructure
- Servers
- Storage
- PC cards
- PC workstations
- Networking products.
Of the six segments, the market intelligence firm anticipates that cloud infrastructure and AI servers will be the two largest, accounting for the majority of sales.
“There are many innovations taking place in AI hardware infrastructure,” says principal analyst Anand Joshi. “The opportunity is being pursued by a diverse group of companies and the outcome of this race could have a big impact on the market landscape. Today, cloud service providers are providing the best value by combining many AI software and hardware options at a low price and these providers have figured out the best way to monetize AI technology. As AI workloads become commonplace, innovations in storage and networking will lead to a more specialized infrastructure for AI.”