Forward-looking: The collaboration between Kioxia and Nvidia marks another step forward for AI data center infrastructure. By pushing toward SSDs capable of 100 million IOPS – dramatically higher than today's top-end drives, which peak around 3 million – the companies are tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in training and deploying massive AI models: data movement. If successful, this breakthrough could not only accelerate the pace of innovation in GenAI, but also redefine how data centers are built, upend competitive dynamics in cloud and enterprise storage, and set new expectations for the entire hardware stack.
Semiconductor memory maker Kioxia is developing next-generation SSD technology designed for ultra-fast read speeds to support demanding AI workloads. The company announced it intends to commercialize an SSD capable of delivering up to 100 million random IOPS by 2027, a performance benchmark about 30 – 35x greater than current high-end models. This ambitious project is being developed in collaboration with Nvidia.
At a briefing in Tokyo, Kioxia explained that the new drive will connect directly to Nvidia GPUs, rather than routing through a server's central processor. This direct, peer-to-peer connection allows much faster data movement between storage and compute resources, a crucial advantage for large-scale AI models that depend on frequent, small, random data reads. Such tasks, including fetching embeddings and model parameters, place unique demands on memory and storage that are not handled efficiently by existing SSD configurations.
Nvidia has also set an even more aggressive target: a two-SSD configuration delivering 200 million IOPS using the forthcoming PCI Express 7.0 standard, which supports high-speed, peer-to-peer GPU communication. For context, today's high-performance SSDs reach about 3 million IOPS on 4K blocks. Achieving a jump to 100 million will require major advancements in both NAND flash technology and interface architecture.
One of the leading candidates to underpin Kioxia's SSD is its proprietary XL-Flash, a SLC NAND memory type engineered for high endurance, low latency, and strong performance. XL-Flash technology supports up to 16 planes within a NAND die compared to the 3 to 6 planes typical in consumer-grade 3D NAND.
While Kioxia has not released full specifications, real-world data offers a glimpse of the challenge ahead. A 400GB XL-Flash SSD with 32 NAND dies and a PCIe 5.0 interface has demonstrated around 3.5 million random read IOPS in testing. If performance scaled perfectly (which it rarely does) a drive with 915 dies could theoretically hit the 100 million IOPS mark. In practice, however, scalability is limited by factors such as controller bandwidth, firmware overhead, and system architecture, meaning that multi-controller designs or modular SSD configurations may be necessary to reach the target.
Recognizing the limits of traditional 3D NAND, Kioxia is also researching high-bandwidth flash (HBF), a new type of storage designed to combine the speed and scalability of high-bandwidth memory with far greater capacity.
HBF combines up to 16 NAND chips and a logic die within a stacked module, interconnected using advanced packaging techniques to maximize parallelism and bandwidth. While it is unclear whether HBF will be part of the final product, this research signals Kioxia's broader strategy to deliver ultra-high-performance storage for the AI era.