Kioxia has notified its customers about its plans to discontinue production of its 2D NAND and 3^rd Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory, reports TechNews.tw. Ceasing production of legacy types of flash memory is nothing new, but the noteworthy thing is that Kioxia will be ending the life of planar NAND memory, a type of memory that preceded 3D NAND and has been in production since the 1980s.

Kioxia is discontinuing a broad range of legacy NAND products, including planar floating-gate NAND built on 32nm (SLC that has been in production since 2009), 24nm (MLC that has been in production since 2010), and 15nm (MLC and TLC that has been in production since 2014) nodes, as well as early-generation 64-layer BiCS3 3D NAND (released around 2017). The phase-out spans all major cell types — SLC, MLC, and TLC — and covers virtually all delivery formats, including raw wafers and packaged solutions such as BGA, TSOP, eMMC, UFS, and SD cards, which indicates full retirement of older technology platforms rather than isolated SKUs.

The wind-down follows a standard multi-year EOL schedule: last-time-buy orders are accepted until September 30, 2026, while final shipments will continue through December 31, 2028, nearly three years from now. After that point, these products will be fully discontinued, which will mark Kioxia's exit from legacy planar NAND and early BiCS generations in favor of more advanced 3D NAND nodes.

At the same time, Kioxia's ceasing of 2D NAND production will also mark the end of planar NAND memory in general, a significant event for the industry, as this type of memory first entered production at Toshiba in circa 1987 and will be discontinued by its successor Kioxia in 2028, 41 years later.

Nowadays, 2D NAND is mostly used on legacy devices, including automotive, consumer electronics, embedded, and industrial applications, and some specialty storage devices with an extended life cycle. While pricing of outdated memory types is usually fixed to keep production economically viable for the manufacturer and buyers, it hardly makes a lot of sense for Kioxia to keep production capacities for 2D NAND amid skyrocketing demand from the AI sector. To that end, as long-term supply contracts with customers come to an end, Kioxia is announcing plans to cease production and shipments of 2D NAND.

Nvidia and Kioxia have been working on a new SSD design that will keep Nvidia's AI GPUs fed with no downtime during intensive AI workloads. Kioxia has announced the new GP series, which Kioxia classifies as a "Super High IOPS" SSD. The new drive will be available for customers to evaluate by the end of 2026.

The new drive is part of Kioxia and Nvidia's move to bring incredibly fast storage to AI GPUs. The GP series comes with Kioxia's XL-flash, which is designed to achieve over 10 million IOPS, a figure that is around three to four times greater than traditional datacenter SSDs. XL-Flash is made using specialized NAND flash that boasts a read latency range of just 3 to 5 microseconds. By comparison, traditional SSDs normally have a peak at 3 to 4 million IOPS and have read latencies in the 40 to 100-microsecond range.

These new drives are part of Nvidia's Storage-Next design that sees servers utilize these drives in conjunction with a direct link to the GPU itself, bypassing additional latency penalties that would occur when transferring data from the CPU. This technology is designed to offset the limitations of existing HBM memory, giving Nvidia's AI GPUs a secondary cache layer to store data and keep the GPU cores operating at 100% without any downtime. This addresses the growing problem of growing AI models that are scaling towards trillions of parameters and context windows that consist of millions of tokens.

We first saw this technology with the BlueField-4 STX storage architecture at GTC 2026. BlueField-4 uses a storage-optimized BlueField-4 DPU and ConnectX-9 SuperNIC that Nvidia claims delivers up to five times the token throughput, four times better energy efficiency, and twice the page ingestion speed compared to traditional CPU-based storage architectures.

Sandisk is on track to double the price of its high-capacity 3D NAND memory devices for enterprise-grade solid-state drives this quarter in anticipation of strong demand for server-class storage in the coming quarters, reports Nomura Securities (via @jukan05). It is unclear to what degree the price increase of high-capacity 3D NAND will affect quotes on mainstream flash memory used in client devices, but normally, 3D NAND for smartphones and PCs follows enterprise-grade chips as they are made at the same fabs.

"Channel checks indicate that several memory suppliers continued to push prices higher, with enterprise-grade NAND facing especially aggressive increases," a note to clients by Nomura Securities reads. "SanDisk’s NAND used in enterprise SSDs is cited as potentially rising by more than 100% quarter over quarter in the March period."

Nomura Securities, which is among the prominent financial analyst firms with good contacts in the high-tech industry, attributes plans of memory suppliers to increase prices of enterprise-grade 3D NAND both to short-term shortages and to mid-term growth of demand driven by AI in general and changes to AI storage in particular.

Nomura names Nvidia's Inference Context Memory Storage Platform (ICMSP) — which is based on the BlueField-4 DPU equipped with a 512 GB SSD that carries KV cache — among the demand drivers for enterprise storage this year. Every compute tray in the VR NVL144 rack is equipped with a BlueField-4 data processing unit with a 512 GB drive, making it 18 DPUs with 9.216 TB of 3D NAND per rack. Assuming that Nvidia ships 50,000 VR NVL144 racks per annum, the company will have to get roughly 0.439 EB of 3D NAND somewhere. Its partners supplying their versions of VR NVL144 racks with BlueField-4 DPUs will also increase their consumption of 3D NAND memory this year with the Vera Rubin platform.

While Nvidia's ICMSP can consume around an exabyte of 3D NAND per annum in 2026 ~ 2027 in the best case scenario, it cannot really be a reason for 3D NAND price doubling overnight, as the industry produces over 800 EB of NAND every year. Meanwhile, we still do not know how much 3D NAND a typical VR NVL144 machine carries, so we cannot estimate storage demands for Rubin-based platforms in general.

Nonetheless, as demand for AI systems for storage is skyrocketing in general, they will inevitably drive up demand, and once it outpaces supply, prices will get higher, which is exactly what we are seeing today.

Kioxia will produce its next-generation BICS9 and BICS10 3D NAND memory next year, but will use different fab sites for different types of flash, according to Nikkei. BiCS10 transitions to an all-new 332-layer 3D NAND array to address high-capacity solutions for AI and hyperscalers.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about 332-layer BiCS10 is that Kioxia (and Sandisk) is pulling in production of this type of memory to 2026, if the Nikkei report is correct. The publication states that both companies initially planned to produce BiCS10 memory in the second half of 2027. However, demand from the AI, cloud, and enterprise sectors likely prompted Kioxia to begin production ahead of schedule for its most advanced memory announced to date.

While both BICS9 and BICS10 use the CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) architecture and boast a 4.8 GT/s Toggle DDR 6.0 interface, BICS9 uses a smaller 218-layer 3D NAND array to target performance-hungry low-power applications.

Different fabs for different memory

As noted above, Kioxia (and therefore Sandisk) will use different fab sites to make BiCS9 and BiCS10 3D NAND. Specifically, the newest Fab 2 near Kitakami, Iwate prefecture, will become the base for making high-capacity 332-layer BiCS10 NAND, whereas the established complex near Yokkaichi in Japan's Mie prefecture will remain the center for 218-layer BiCS9 3D NAND.

The decision to produce flagship BiCS10 devices at Fab 2 in Iwate Prefecture makes a lot of sense, as the site has the latest equipment, even though Kioxia's R&D center is in Yokkaichi. However, the fabs in Yokkaichi are still good enough (and largely depreciated) for BiCS9, will address mainstream devices, and must be cost-effective to manufacture.

Keep in mind that the information is largely unofficial and unconfirmed by Kioxia and Sandisk; many details are subject to change ahead of an official announcement.

CBA: The key to next-generation 3D NAND

Developing high-speed memory interfaces for 3D NAND is challenging, so leading flash memory suppliers have taken a page from Yangtze Memory's playbook. Companies have begun producing memory arrays and peripheral CMOS logic responsible for memory operations on separate layers. These are then attached together using hybrid-bonding techniques. Kioxia and Samsung call their architecture CMOS Directly Bonded to Array (CBA) and have been deploying the technique since BiCS8 3D NAND, which started production in the second half of 2024.

The companies plan to continue using CBA with BiCS9 and BiCS10, but this time around, adopting an 8-bit Toggle DDR 6.0 interface with a 4.8 GT/s data transfer rate (600 MB/s). This is done to increase performance to unprecedented levels for both generations of 3D NAND, which are set to coexist in the market, targeting different applications.

Kioxia’s Toggle DDR 6.0 interface combines three elements: an unmatched DQS timing scheme, per-pin VREF training (PPVT), and a compact 2-way decision-feedback equalizer (2TI-DFE). Each data pin (DQ [7:0]) has its own calibrated reference voltage, enabling the receiver to detect bits at 4.8 Gbps correctly.

Instead of using the heavier 4-way interleaved DFE used in DRAM interfaces, Kioxia implemented a 2-way version with a Data-Driven Self-Reset (DDSR) circuit. This holds the previous decision values (OP and OM) until it detects a polarity change via a small 3-input NAND gate, preventing incorrect feedback and reducing both area and power.

On the timing side, the Toggle DDR 6.0 interface uses an unmatched DQS structure with PPVT and a simplified 2TI-DFE to simplify timing alignment while still enabling deterministic data read windowing. This cooperation extends the safe sampling window for incoming data without requiring additional analog hardware, which is costly in terms of power and transistor budget. Shmoo plots for all eight data lines confirm that the interface should stay reliable at 4.8 GT/s with this design.

BiCS9: 218L 3D NAND meets Toggle DDR 6.0 at 4.8 GT/s

Implementing both a very high-speed interface and an all-new 3D NAND array with 332 active layers is a costly project that yields high-performance, high-capacity 3D NAND that not all applications actually require. To that end, BiCS9 combines the proven 218-layer 3D NAND array with the NAND interface at 4.8 GT/s.

As Sandisk calls it, BiCS9 will power 'capital-efficient, high-performance, low-power products,' which primarily includes cost-sensitive client storage solutions such as those used in PCs and smartphones, as well as products that require pure performance, and do not need the highest capacity or storage density available.

Perhaps, once yields of 332-layer 3D NAND match those of 218-layer 3D NAND, Kioxia and Sandisk will transition to the new process technology and lower their costs. For now, it makes more sense for both companies to reserve the 332-layer 3D NAND array for applications requiring maximum storage density and capacity.

BiCS10: 332L 3D NAND with lower latency and lower power meets Toggle DDR 6.0 at 4.8 GT/s

While 332-layer BiCS10 3D NAND increases bit density by a whopping 59% to 29 Gb/mm^2, this isn't the only improvement the new type of memory offers, as it also shrinks read latency by around 4 microseconds, and reduces read power consumption by 29%, from around 100 mj per GB to near 75 mj per GB.

Based on Kioxia's description, the company has boosted read performance in BiCS10 3D NAND by changing how the unselected word lines (WLs) behave during continuous reads. In a very tall 332-layer stack, most of the delay and energy cost comes from repeatedly charging long WL strings from VSS up to VREAD.

Normally, after each read, the internal read voltage fully drops to ground and then climbs back to VREAD for the next cycle, which takes time and draws significant current. Kioxia's new method avoids that full swing: after the first read, the circuit lowers VREAD only to an intermediate level (still above VSS), and then, before the next read, raises it back to the full read voltage. Because the WLs move over a smaller voltage range, the array charges faster and consumes less current. Such an architecture makes the read path more efficient and better suited for continuous-access workloads, which is crucial for high-layer NAND dies.

The Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 is a solid all-around SSD. Kioxia is probably best known for its OEM and enterprise drives, and to some extent, its Exceria line of consumer drives has flown under the radar. This is a misjustice because these drives have a solid reputation for reliability, with generally few downsides with the hardware. Performance and power efficiency are acceptable to good, and there’s no unusual switching of the type of flash, unlike what we see with some other vendors. You can pick up one of these, including the Plus G4, and expect a straightforward experience. What’s not to love?

If there’s a cost for this experience, it’s probably found in the limited capacity range, middle-of-the-road performance, and, to some extent, availability and pricing concerns. This isn’t the drive for maximum performance or power efficiency; it’s not going to solve your needs for a super small drive or a large drive, and it might not always be a sensible option economically. But there are sales, and perhaps more importantly, some regions of the world have fewer reliable drive choices, and Kioxia’s Exceria drives might be more competitive. The Plus G4, in particular, also demonstrates what’s good about this class of drives – they can be used for any purpose while delivering a decent experience.

This makes it a safe drive to pick up if you’re just trying to put the last-minute final touches on a build. Maybe you’re not sure what to get, or maybe this drive catches your eye on a sale. Whatever the case, its greatest strength is that you can buy it without worry. Peace of mind is a value of its own. Kioxia’s SSDs are not fancy, and that, in our opinion, is to their benefit. We believe Crucial has a stronger hold in this market segment with the P510, but the Plus G4 is a good alternative, and it surpasses the P510 in enough areas to remain competitive.

Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 Specifications

The Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 is only available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, which might sound crazy to some. There is a market for smaller drives, especially 512GB, and larger drives of 4TB or more. However, the statistics don’t lie – 1TB and 2TB remain the most popular capacities, and these provide plenty of space for most people. Crucial’s P510 has the same capacities on offer for good reason. The Exceria Plus G4 directly competes with that drive, so we can’t act too surprised by this turn of events. With costs getting tighter in the NAND flash and SSD storage markets, it’s safer to focus on high-volume SKUs.

Currently, the Exceria Plus G4, or Plus G4 for short, sells at $142.99 and $209.99 on Amazon. This is way too high for the 1TB, and the 2TB is more expensive than the competition, including the P510. However, the Plus G4 is likely to be more widely available in other regions and probably at a more competitive price. The drive has modest performance levels of up to 10,000 / 8,200 MB/s for sequential reads and writes with up to 1,300 K / 1,400K random read and write IOPS. The warranty is standard at five years, with up to 600TB of write endurance per TB of capacity

Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 Software and Accessories

Kioxia offers its SSD Utility management software for its SSDs. This is an SSD toolbox that gives a health summary of the drive and also lets you monitor the SSD in real time. The application also helps with firmware updates, password protection, and enables functions such as secure erase. The program works for Windows 10 and up, and it works on all of Kioxia’s recent SSDs.

It’s nice to see such software being offered for what are essentially client or OEM drives, but Kioxia has been pushing deeper into the retail space with its Plus line of drives. Most users are on Windows, and the software covers the most common functions, so it’s a respectable attempt.

Kioxia Exceria Plus G4: A Closer Look

Even without removing the top label, which Kioxia states does help spread and dissipate heat, we can tell this is a Phison drive from the power management IC (PMIC). The label states it’s a PCIe 5.0 drive, so that narrows things down considerably.

This is a single-sided drive at all capacities, so the back has no components. The drive lists its Physical Security ID (PSID), which means this drive supports TCG Opal. Phison controllers can and do support hardware encryption, but that feature likely adds to the manufacturer’s cost, which is why many brands omit SED support. It’s more common as at least an option on client and OEM drives due to business requirements, although typically you will have two separate SKUs for it, as is common with Micron drives.

The Plus G4 uses Phison’s E31T controller. For more details, see our E31T preview. For a brief reminder of the specifications: this is a four-channel DRAM-less PCIe 5.0 solution that can support an I/O rate up to 3,600 MT/s per NAND channel. 3,600 MT/s can be assumed to be 3,600 MB/s as consumer NAND flash transfers 8 bits, or one byte, at a time. There is overhead on these transfers, so the maximum bandwidth will be less than the channel count times this number. In this case, Phison rates the E31T for up to 10,600 MB/s. Eventually, these drives will be surpassed by 4,800 MT/s capable controllers and flash.

With four chip enable (CE) signals per channel, this drive can normally handle up to 32 dies without a problem, which is 4TB with current flash, although 2Tb dies would bump this up to 8TB. This is unlikely to ever happen, and for the most part, we’ve really only seen drives up to 2TB with this controller. This is something that frustrates the storage community, who see no reason for 4TB not to be commonplace. The reality is that it’s not cost-effective to run fast flash at that capacity when most of the market is selling smaller drives. 4TB drives can be found in other segments – on higher-end drives or with YMTC flash – and sticking to 2TB or less streamlines the production process for the third-party vendors. Flash availability is also a direct influence here, as QLC is in high demand in the enterprise.

Kioxia has an easier time with that since it manufactures its own flash. The NAND flash packages here are labeled TH58LKT3T488A8S, which are still using the old Toshiba coding. We already know these are 1TB packages with eight 1Tb dies each, using 218-Layer BiCS8 TLC flash. We’ve only had good results with this flash – see the Sandisk WD_Black SN8100 – and it’s proven to be power-efficient with low 4K latency. Combined with Kioxia’s usually reliable custom firmware, we expect only good things.

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Comparison Products

The Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 is directly positioned to compete with mid-range PCIe 5.0 SSDs, so we arranged our test pool accordingly. Some popular ones include the Corsair MP700 Elite, which uses the same hardware, and the Crucial P510, which has the same controller but Micron rather than Kioxia TLC flash. This performance line was once fulfilled by early E26-based drives like the Corsair MP700. Those have eight channels and DRAM, but older flash.

Higher-end options include the Sandisk WD_Black SN8100, which is the best of the best right now, and the Acer Predator GM9000, a drive that represents less expensive high-end options that cut cost by using older flash or, in the case of the Biwin Black Opal X570, no DRAM.

We are also comparing the three musketeers of high-end Gen 4 DRAM-less: the Maxio MAP1602-based Silicon Power US75, the Phison E27T-based Sabrent Rocket 4, and the SMI SM2268XT2-based Kingston NV3. The NV3 and US75 are known for hardware revisions but we want to cover all potential competitors. If you’re looking at a drive like the Plus G4, then there’s the sparkle of some money saved by dropping down to PCIe 4.0, especially given that you might be running your next drive at least temporarily at that speed.

Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and we also include notes about which drives may be future-proofed.

Hey, the Plus G4 scores pretty well here! It edges out the Micron-fuelled P510 and lines up nicely with the MP700 Elite. The drive is performing exactly as expected, which, for games, is exceptional. High-end PCIe 5.0 drives are still better, but the Plus G4 is more than fast enough for a primary drive where you also keep all of your games. The only downside is that it only goes up to 2TB.

Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.

The Plus G4 also has relatively good application performance, but here it is closer to the P510, and it falls behind the similarly equipped MP700 Elite. Why is this so? Well, PCMark is one of those benchmarks that we know some manufacturers have optimized for in firmware. This also goes the other way in that optimized firmware could hurt a drive in this benchmark.

Client drives, with one application being for use in standardized prebuilt PCs for small businesses, have different requirements than retail. Getting fully specced for Dell or HP is actually a long and potentially grueling process. Client drives usually have a tighter performance envelope based on thermals, and reliability is a higher priority. This is one reason Kioxia drives have proven to be more reliable than analogous retail drives, even with spotty controllers like the InnoGrit IG5236 on the XG8.

We’re pointing that out because a lot of the time, SSD buyers have a single priority in mind: reliability. This is a very difficult thing to quantify. Most of the time, it comes down to a battle of anecdotes. Well, Kioxia drives have a decent track record for reliability, and if a slight decrease in PCMark 10 performance isn’t concerning to you, then you should consider a drive like the Plus G4 if you’re weighing various options. Kioxia makes the flash on this drive, which gives them a leg up on understanding how to optimize for a consistent, reliable experience.

Console Testing — PlayStation 5 Transfers

The PlayStation 5 is capable of taking one additional PCIe 4.0 or faster SSD for extra game storage. While any 4.0 drive will technically work, Sony recommends drives that can deliver at least 5,500 MB/s of sequential read bandwidth for optimal performance. In our testing, PCIe 5.0 SSDs don’t bring much to the table and generally shouldn’t be used in the PS5, especially as they may require additional cooling. Check our Best PS5 SSDs article for more information.

Our testing utilizes the PS5’s internal storage test and manual read/write tests with over 192GB of data both from and to the internal storage. Throttling is prevented where possible to see how each drive operates under ideal conditions. While game load times should not deviate much from drive to drive, our results can indicate which drives may be more responsive in long-term use.

We don’t see any reason to particularly recommend the Plus G4 for the PS5. It could be a good choice if you want something that might last a long time in a predictable role, but usually it’s better to go with something less expensive that has a full five-year warranty from a known name brand. If such a drive goes bad, you can often get an equivalent or superior replacement. In some regions, this is more difficult, and Kioxia drives can be a safer bet than alternatives with unknown hardware.

Transfer Rates — DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.

The Plus G4 is back to scoring where it should be on our DiskBench copy test: above the P510 and close to the MP700 Elite. It should match the MP700 Elite, and instead, it’s a little behind, but this is expected. The Plus G4 may be optimized differently for sustained writes, which will impact its write performance in this test. Additionally, it has a different firmware revision than the one we tested on the Corsair. Also expected is the P510 falling even more behind, but this perhaps warrants more discussion.

Careful readers will recall that in our Crucial T710 review, we mentioned that the T710, with its six-plane Micron TLC flash, can actually be faster at the lowest 1TB capacity. Likewise, the P510 is rated higher for sequential writes at 1TB – with the same flash as the T710 – in comparison to the four-plane BiCS8 on the MP700 Elite and Plus G4. This means that bandwidth-hungry buyers should lean towards the P510 at 1TB, while BiCS8 is potentially better at 2TB. If you care less about throughput – and if so, why are you looking at a mid-range PCIe 5.0 drive? – then we have typically found BiCS8 to have better latency.

Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.

The Plus G4 tracks closely with the MP700 Elite in ATTO, with a slight deviation at the largest block size for reads. These two drives are close to the P510 in writes, but they fall behind on reads starting at 256KiB. As all three are using the same controller, this is probably due to the difference in flash. If we had 1TB versions of these drives to compare, we could make a better guess as to why the drives perform this way. Most likely, it’s due to the plane count difference, as this can influence interleaving with superpages, probably explaining why the P510 dips at 128KiB as well.

This is reinforced to some extent by the sequential CDM results. QD1 sequential reads favor the P510, suggesting the higher plane count can be useful here. That lines up with our thoughts in the T710 review. As QD1 is a more realistic workload, going with Micron’s newest TLC flash has potential real-world advantages. This advantage disappears with queue depth. Also obvious here is that PCIe 4.0 drives have no chance of keeping up in bandwidth, and the fastest PCIe 5.0 drives are in a class of their own. The mid-range drives like the Plus G4 are still worth a look as they are less expensive and will perform well in a PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot if so required.

We then look at 4K random I/O performance with a specific emphasis on low queue depth latency. Yes, the ability of the Plus G4 to push over a million IOPS is incredible, but this class of drive is less likely to encounter such workloads. Luckily, the BiCS8 TLC flash does good work on this drive with top-notch 4K QD1 read and write latencies. It can’t match the Black SN8100, but it beats the rest. We’ve come to expect good things out of BiCS8 flash, and the Plus G4 doesn’t disappoint.

If you did need to use this drive for more powerful things, for AI or otherwise, it is certainly up to the task, but we’re not convinced it’s the best option for that.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, which is the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states as well as the steady state write performance.

The 2TB Plus G4 first writes in its fastest, single-bit mode at over 8.9 GB/s. This is a temporary mode designed to trade capacity for speed. The cache size will vary with how full the drive is, but when empty, as in our testing, the cache extends to over 435GB. When converting 3-bit TLC flash to this pSLC mode, you can have up to almost 700GB, so this cache is of a more moderate size.

Larger, full-drive caches are typical for low-end DRAM-less drives, while small caches are rarer. The P510 is an example of the latter, and such a scheme allows it to write more consistently, which is particularly good for external use in an enclosure or for certain workloads such as NAS caching. The Plus G4 takes the more common course of somewhere in between.

Once the Plus G4 fills the cache, it falls to a direct-to-TLC mode at 1.5 GB/s, which is a pretty good speed and matches the MP700 Elite’s steady state write speed. Both it and the MP700 Elite write in TLC for quite a while before finally hitting a folding state. This occurs when the drive is forced to wait for data to be moved over from the cache to the native flash before it can accept incoming writes. The drive can and will move some data over while in TLC mode, but depending on the cache size and drive speed, this may be unsustainable. Folding is an undesirable state as it’s slower with higher latency, which can also impact reads for mixed workloads.

Generally, any given drive is limited to the base speed of its native flash. This is why QLC flash inevitably gets very slow. The pSLC write state is so much faster than the QLC flash – and QLC can be just as fast as TLC in that mode with the same plane count – that the drive hits a wall more quickly and more drastically, especially as QLC is going from 4-bit to 1-bit instead of 3-bit to 1-bit. The relevance here is that the Plus G4 looks worse than the MP700 Elite in the long run in this test despite having the same flash, but that’s likely because the Plus G4 is optimized differently. Client and OEM drives aren’t designed for sustained writes and often have a tighter power-thermal envelope. The performance here in pSLC and TLC is perfectly consistent, though.

The one standout here is the P510, which, as we mentioned above, has a smaller cache. The TLC state is then fast in comparison to the Plus G4, but is actually slow in terms of what the drive can do – the P510 has no trouble recovering to 4 GB/s with enough writes. Take into consideration that it’s not realistic to write the entire drive and that interpolation can get messy when we do this level of writes, but the results still suggest that Crucial is being conservative with the P510. We previously pointed out that this might be intended to improve the “quality of service” that was an issue on the T500, or it could be hinting at future external drive products.

This type of write behavior would be perfect for an enclosure where bottlenecks don’t benefit much from pSLC anyway, and a consistent write speed is desirable. However, for desktop use and moving back to the drive under review, the Plus G4 is adequate for even fairly heavy use.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre stock storage. Desktops may be more performance-oriented with less support for power-saving features, so we show the worst-case.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption but performance-per-watt, or efficiency, is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

For temperature recording we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature.

The Plus G4 is quite efficient, more efficient than the P510 but less than the MP700 Elite. We already know from experience that BiCS8 flash is more efficient than Micron’s, with appropriate trade-offs, but the Plus G4 still falls behind the fastest BiCS8-based drives. This might again be due to optimization.

We would like to point out that among the E31T-based drives we’ve tested, some – specifically the P510 and PNY CS2150 – have custom firmware strings, while others, including the MP700 Elite and Plus G4, have utilized standard Phison versioning. That does not mean there is or isn’t a lack of custom implementation, not least because Sandisk and Kioxia BiCS8 actually do not perform the same in all cases. That sounds unusual, as the flash should be identical; however, there are performance differences on some Phison controllers, such as the E28, based on early reports.

Regardless of the specific reasons for any differences, while the Plus G4 is less efficient on paper and has some minor performance quirks, the result is a more reliable experience. Our temperature testing backs this up as we hit a maximum temperature of 51°C, which is more than 30°C below the throttling point. This is an excellent result, making this a fantastic drive for laptops and other hot or confined environments. This is sensible since client and OEM drives often need to survive in low-airflow cases and warmer ambients.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Lexar NM1090 Pro Bottom Line

The Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 isn’t a drive we expected to be excited about, but Kioxia’s Exceria line has gained popularity, especially in non-U.S. regions, and the drives have at least a neutral reputation, and usually a positive one. Contrast this with the infamous problems that we see with some drives that have changing hardware, which includes not only going from TLC to QLC flash but also swaps to hotter or less reliable controllers, and the usual rumor mill of “broken” drives, like with the Phison E18 performance issue. Kioxia has effectively dodged all of this and has also managed to maintain respectable levels of performance and power efficiency.

That’s both a positive and a negative. The Plus G4 doesn’t stand out in any way, but its baseline characteristics are sufficient. We would like better availability and maybe a wider capacity range. However, for many markets, the Plus G4 could be a diamond in the rough, and we feel it’s worth covering this drive for that reason alone.

Pricing right now in the U.S. isn’t competitive, but at least we get to see where this drive falls against the competition, most notably the Crucial P510. You can get higher bandwidth, decent power efficiency, good all-around and sustained performance, and reasonable pricing at the most popular capacities. You can’t go wrong buying any of these drives, including the Plus G4, and that's a good thing.

If you want something less expensive, there are plenty of PCIe 4.0 drives, and if you want something faster, there are high-end PCIe 5.0 drives available. If you need more capacity, well, there are many affordable 4TB drives, and the 8TB WD Black SN850X remains a good choice. Nothing much changes here, but the Plus G4 has its place.

We have the feeling that the Plus G4 would be a reliable drive that runs cool and has at least halfway decent software support. This isn’t a no-name brand slapping its name on random hardware. It’s a viable alternative and is a safe pick for a last-minute build or project. At the end of the day, the Plus G4 is not terribly exciting, but it’s a good SSD – not everything has to be covered in liquid cooling and RGB – and we can readily recommend it.

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Kioxia is working with Nvidia to build a solid-state drive that would deliver 100 million random IOPS already in 2027, the company said at a news conference earlier this month, Nikkei reports. Nvidia reportedly plans to use a couple of such SSDs — totalling a whopping 200 million IOPS — attached directly to its GPUs to boost AI performance.

"We will proceed with development in accordance with the proposals and requests from Nvidia," said Koichi Fukuda, chief technology officer of Kioxia's SSD division.

100 million IOPS SSD

Kioxia's drives with 100 million random read speeds are projected to use a PCIe 7.0 interface to connect to GPUs in a peer-to-peer mode and will be exclusively designed for use in AI servers that need to access and process vast amounts of data quickly.

Today's high-end solid-state drives can deliver around 3 million 4K random IOPS, but to meet the performance needs of modern and upcoming GPUs — which are optimized for burst memory access — they need to get substantially faster and change the way they interact with NAND media.

Earlier this year, Silicon Motion's CEO Wallace Kou told Tom's Hardware that Nvidia was interested in building SSDs that offer as many as 100 million random IOPS, 33 times more than existing drives can deliver. Around the same time, Kioxia disclosed plans to build XL-Flash-based 'AI SSDs' with over 10 million 512K random read IOPS in the second half of 2026.

AI workloads rely on frequent, small, random reads to retrieve embeddings, model parameters, or database entries. In such cases, 512-byte blocks better represent actual usage patterns than 4KB blocks and provide lower latency. While drives that operate 512B blocks may not deliver the same raw bandwidth as typical SSDs with 4K blocks, it is easier to scale out sequential read/write speeds with multiple drives than to lower the latencies of conventional SSDs.

It remains to be seen whether Kioxia's AI SSD with a 10 million 512K IOPS random performance will materialize in 2026 if Kioxia plans to build drives with a 100 million IOPS random performance in 2027.

Using XL-Flash?

What is interesting is how exactly Kioxia plans to build its 100 million IOPS drive. Its proposed AI SSD is based on XL-Flash, which is SLC NAND memory with high endurance, very low latency, and fairly high performance. Kioxia's XL-Flash devices feature 16 planes (up significantly from 3 to 6 planes on modern 3D NAND devices for client PCs), which points to higher sequential and random performance. As Kioxia does not publish specifications of XL-Flash, it is impossible to judge the per-device performance of this memory type.

Meanwhile, considering that an Innogrit Tacoma-based 400GB XL-Flash SSD with 32 NAND dies (with seven allocated for overprovisioning) and a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface delivers 3.5 million random read IOPS and 0.5 million random write IOPS, we can estimate that each die contributes up to 109,375 random read IOPS and 15,625 random write IOPS—though this calculation comes with some caveats.

Assuming perfect linear scaling across loads of NAND devices, a 100 million 512B IOPS SSD would require 915 of such dies (presuming the same levels of over provisioning). Now that Kioxia knows how to pack 32 NAND ICs into a single package, it can certainly build a drive based on 915 XL-Flash ICs (in 28 packages). Such a drive would require a special controller with at least a PCIe 5.0 x16 host interface (though PCIe 7.0 x4 would be more preferable). The problem is, there is no perfect linear scaling. Real-world performance of NAND devices in SSDs is limited by channel bandwidth, multi‑plane constraints, command pipelining/overheads, queue depth, firmware, and loads of other factors. Hence, the best case scenario for a 100 million 512B IOPS SSD featuring XL-Flash devices is a multi-controller module with dozens of controllers and a switch. Such a solution may well make sense in all-flash arrays, but Kioxia is explicitly talking about an SSD.

Welcome, HBF?

Japanese memory manufacturer Kioxia doesn’t have the same kind of name recognition as its former parent company, Toshiba, which invented flash memory in the 1980s. But the spun-off company, renamed in 2019 as a combination of the Japanese word for ‘memory and the Greek word for ‘value,’ has remained a major player in cutting-edge solid-state storage, alongside Samsung, Micron / Crucial, SK hynix, and WD / SanDisk.

Kioxia largely sticks to selling flash, SSDs, and related technology to other companies, at least here in the United States. But when a representative from Kioxia Europe reached out about testing a consumer-focused external SSD, the Exceria Plus G2, I was curious to see what the drive was capable of and how it would stack up against the best external SSDs we’ve tested, despite the fact that this pocket-friendly drive isn’t officially available in the U.S.

As a 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen2) SSD, I knew it wasn’t going to break any speed records, but how does this drive stand up against competing compact metal-shelled offerings like the SK hynix Beetle X31 and the various X9s and X10s from Crucial? Read on to see our benchmark results. But first, here are the specs for the Exceria Plus G2, direct from Kioxia:

Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 (2TB) specifications

Design and accessories

The black metal aluminum shell of the Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 feels very solid in my hand, and the convex top and bottom feel distinctive. This design may cause some complications, though, for those who like to use Velcro or other materials to stick their drives to the side of a camera, phone, or the lid of their laptop.

Kioxia thoughtfully includes both a USB-C-to-USB-A and a USB-C-to-USB-C cable along with the drive, both of which are about a foot long, including the plugs. A tiny activity light lives on the end of the drive, next to the USB-C port.

Pricing

You can find the Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 for sale in the U.S. via third-party sellers or on eBay, but generally not at competitive prices. At Amazon in the U.K., the 2TB model we tested was selling for £149 when I wrote this, with the 1TB version going for £93 and the 512GB capacity for £65. SK hynix’ competing Beetle X31 (another 10 Gbps drive with a metal shell), was selling for a little less: £137 for the 2TB model and £82 for the 1TB.

But both those drives are undercut in the U.K. by Crucial’s X9 Pro (which we tested alongside the X10 Pro), at just £108 in the 2TB capacity. The Crucial drive was on sale when I priced out these drives, but it seems clear that, at least in the U.K., Kioxia’s drive faces stiff competition when it comes to price.

Software

The drive itself arrives empty, but Kioxia does offer a downloadable SSD Utility on its website that lets you monitor drive health, update firmware if necessary, and password-protect the drive. It is a bit curious that the company doesn’t include an installer or at least a link on the drive itself, especially given that the Exceria Plus G2 features 256-bit AES hardware encryption. But the program is intuitively laid out and feature-packed, should you search it out and install it.

Comparison products

At 72 x 40 x 11.8 mm and 42 grams, the Exceria Plus G2 is smaller than many competing drives. The SK hynix Beetle X31 is thicker and heavier (74 X 46 X 14.8 mm, 53 grams), but Crucial’s X10, X10 Pro, and X9 drives remain among the smallest, at 65 x 50 x 10 mm and the same 42 grams as the Kioxia drive.

Beyond minute measuring contests, though, most major external SSDs are similarly pocket-friendly and light these days, unless you count models like LaCie’s Rugged SSD Pro, which is a bulky 150 grams thanks to its rubber exterior and the internal cooling necessary for Thunderbolt 5-class speeds.

Storage testbed update

Earlier in 2025, we updated our external storage testbed to an AMD Ryzen 7600X-based PC with an Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard, installed in Lian Li’s Lancool 217 case. This was done in part because we needed a system with native USB4 support for upcoming drives.

All the drives in the charts below have been re-tested on the new X870E system, with the exception of the final Iometer sustained sequential test, which is less about top speed and more about how long a drive can write before depleting any fast cache. We also updated to CrystalDiskMark 8, rather than the older (and non-comparable) version 7 we used on the previous testbed.

Trace Testing - PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

In this first test, the Kioxia drive didn’t exactly impress; It landed last among the drives we recently retested. That said, its score of 974 wasn’t far from most other 10 Gbps drives, which tend to top out around 1,150 points on this test.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

In this real-world file transfer, the Kioxia Exceria G2 looked a little better, beating out the SK hynix Beetle X31 and Seagate’s flash-drive-like Ultra-Compact SSD.

Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

In this best-case synthetic scenario on our overhauled testbed, the Kioxia drive managed to edge out three other drives, but landed slightly behind SK hynix and Crucial's competitors.

Small file performance is one area where the Kioxia drive shines. It lands behind the SK hynix Beetle X31 and Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD once again, but ahead of many other drives, including some with a faster 20 Gbps interface.

Sustained Write Performance

A drive's rated write specifications are only a piece of the performance picture. Most external SSDs (just like their internal counterparts) implement a write cache, or a fast area of flash, programmed to perform like fast SLC, that absorbs incoming data.

Sustained write speeds often suffer tremendously when the workload saturates the cache and slips into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated.

The Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 again looks good on this most demanding of tests, managing to write for close to 12 minutes at above 1,000 MB/s (and slightly above its rated write speed), before dropping below 400 MB/s for the remainder of our test. If you need something that can handle lengthier sustained writes than that, you should probably opt for something like the Crucial X9 Pro, or better yet, something with a faster USB interface if your systems support it.

Bottom line

With a solid, small metal shell, hardware-based encryption, solid (if not class-leading) 10 Gbps performance, and USB-C and USB-A cables included in the box, Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 is a decent option for backing up or transporting your important data. Whether or not it stands out is largely down to its price in your region, as it’s not officially available in the U.S. But if it costs less than competing drives like the SK hynix Beetle X31 or Crucial’s X9 where you live, it’s easy to recommend.

Kioxia has developed a prototype of the 5TB high-bandwidth flash memory module with a bandwidth of 64 GB/s. It's essentially NAND-based memory for GPUs. Compared to HBM, High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) adapts the concept to NAND flash, offering 8-16x the capacity of DRAM-based HBM. By combining speed with persistent storage, HBF enables large AI datasets to be accessed efficiently while using less power. One of these HBF modules, which Kioxia has pushed to 64 GB/s, is what allows this capability.

When you hear “flash storage,” you usually think in terms of capacity first, speed second. Even the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs today—14 GB/s class drives like Samsung’s 9100 Pro—are dwarfed by the bandwidth demands of modern GPUs and CPUs. Kioxia’s new prototype turns that expectation on its head: a single flash module delivering 5 TB of capacity and 64 GB/s of sustained bandwidth over PCIe 6.0. To put that into perspective, that’s over 4x faster than the fastest PCIe 5.0 drives shipping today, and within striking distance of HBM2E’s per-stack throughput.

The key is how the system scales; instead of one central controller trying to manage an entire bank of NAND—which quickly becomes a bottleneck as more dies and channels are added—Kioxia gives each module its own controller. That controller sits right next to its NAND and links to others in a daisy-chain layout. This reduces crosstalk and eliminates the complexity of wide parallel buses, which become increasingly challenging to manage as speeds increase. Instead, data is passed along in series, with each link pushing 128 Gbps using PAM4 signaling.

PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with four levels) doubles the data rate per symbol compared to traditional NRZ signaling, but it’s also more sensitive to noise and bit errors. To maintain signal integrity, Kioxia relies on equalization, error correction, and stronger pre-emphasis—similar to what PCIe 6.0 itself requires.

This helps explain the move to PCIe 6.0 as the host interface, as x16 lanes of PCIe 6.0 can theoretically handle around 128 GB/s bidirectional. Kioxia’s 64 GB/s target sits just under half that limit, leaving enough headroom for error correction and overhead without maxing out the bus.

As you might be expecting, latency is the main tradeoff. HBM memory works in hundreds of nanoseconds, almost like an extension of GPU registers. NAND flash—even with advanced controllers—still accesses data in tens of microseconds, which is magnitudes slower. Kioxia counters this with aggressive prefetching and controller-level caching, so sequential workloads are less affected. It doesn’t make NAND as fast as DRAM, but it narrows the gap enough that for streaming datasets, AI checkpoints, or large graph analytics, bandwidth matters more than raw latency.

Power is another crucial factor here, as Kioxia claims under 40W per module, which appears impressive when compared to traditional Gen5 SSDs that can draw up to 15W for ~14 GB/s. On a GB/s per Watt basis, this module is dramatically more efficient. That matters because in a hyperscale rack, a few hundred drives can easily consume multiple kilowatts. AI datacenters—already ballooning in power budgets thanks to H100 clusters—need every watt saved at the storage layer.

These modules also open up new system design options. With daisy-chained controllers, adding more modules doesn’t consume additional bandwidth, so performance scales linearly with capacity. A complete set of 16 could reach 80 TB of flash and over 1 TB/s of throughput—numbers once limited to parallel file systems or DRAM scratchpads. This makes it possible to treat storage as near-memory, sitting directly on the PCIe fabric alongside accelerators, rather than being stuck in back-end I/O.

Decades of evolution have made NAND flash memory both cheap and incredibly sophisticated. No matter what modern device you pick up, the likelihood is that it will use some kind of NAND, which has become ubiquitous in both consumer products and data centers. If you cast your mind back several decades, NAND was expensive, despite its capability to be faster than spinning disks. As the technology has matured, its use has grown exponentially. But what's next?

In the coming years, we're going to see cheaper, more advanced non-volatile flash memory inside our devices. Those 3D NAND devices will be built from over 500 layers and boast interface speeds of up to 4800 MT/s. This blistering speed may pave the way to all-new kinds of devices with significantly increased performance compared to today's best SSDs.

The next step

Like other technologies, 3D NAND develops in multiple directions. End users demand higher capacity, higher performance, lower power, compact dimensions, and lower cost. Manufacturers themselves want to earn money, so while meeting demand, they try to cut costs by making smaller memory devices. Given the current state of industry development, the best way to keep the size of 3D NAND dies in check is to increase the number of layers and decrease the size of the actual data storage location — the memory cell itself. This practice is commonplace among memory makers today.

Leading makers of 3D NAND memory, including Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, and YMTC, have all developed multiple 3D NAND generations, consistently increasing layer counts while reducing cell sizes. For now, the majority of 3D NAND-based devices, including SSDs and smartphones, rely on memory with 2xx layers, with each layer holding an incredible number of memory cells for data storage.

This might be 218-layer 3D NAND from Kioxia, 232-layer 3D NAND from Micron, or 286-layer 3D NAND from Samsung.

The pace at which manufacturers adopt new layer counts and boost transfer rates varies across the industry, making things difficult to track. So let's examine where we were in 2023, how it's going, and where we might be in 2027. Just as a reminder: Kioxia also has a close production partnership with Western Digital's flash division, which also owns SanDisk as a subsidiary. Within this article, we'll refer to the duo as Kioxia / Western Digital.

In recent years, the industry faced significant challenges in building an SSD with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that would fully saturate that interface. ICs with a high-performance interface that could fully saturate the lane using an eight-channel controller (e.g., 2400 MT/s) are rare. Instead, ICs that supported lower speeds are much more common.

By early 2023, all three major NAND vendors — Kioxia / Western Digital, Micron, and Samsung — had established 2400 MT/s as the baseline interface speed across TLC products. Kioxia's BiCS 6T and 6Q nodes, Micron’s B58, and Samsung’s V8T are representative of these tiers as a mainstream standard, and perhaps this reflects a consistent performance scaling for both consumer and enterprise storage segments.

In 2024, Samsung took the next incremental step by introducing its V9T TLC at 3000 MT/s. This intermediate speed tier, not shared by other vendors in the roadmap, highlights Samsung’s focus on being a vertically integrated company that focuses mainly on its own-brand products, like smartphones and SSDs.

Kioxia / Western Digital reached 3200 MT/s in the second half of 2024, with its 8th Gen BiCS 3D TLC, followed by QLC (BiCS 8Q) products in 2025 H2. However, Kioxia / Western Digital has not mentioned using 7th Gen products at all, skipping it entirely.

This reflects a general push to align both TLC and QLC offerings on higher-performance platforms. Notably, Kioxia / Western Digital is the only vendor explicitly listed in the roadmap as deploying 3200 MT/s in both cell types, showing a strong commitment to QLC performance uplift.

In 2024, Micron came to leadership with its B68S IC, sporting a 3600 MT/s data transfer rate. By the second half of 2025, the company’s QLC roadmap plans to catch up with Samsung via the N69 generation. This highlights Micron’s early adoption of faster interfaces for high-end products, but since it's yet to be released, its impact and uptake remain to be seen. Kioxia/Western Digital also lists its BiCS 8Q QLC reaching 3600 MT/s in 2025 H2, indicating a broader QLC performance push across the industry.

All vendors eventually converge at 4800 MT/s by 2027, which becomes the high-performance standard. Kioxia/WD reaches this milestone with BiCS 9T TLC in 2027 H1, Micron with B78 TLC and N79 QLC in 2027 H1–H2, and Samsung with its 11th generation of V-NAND.

Performance headwinds

Manufacturing high-speed NAND flash (3600 MT/s and higher) requires a more expensive logic process technology, which drives up production costs and inflates flash memory prices.

An increase in 3D NAND data transfer rates will have a very practical implication on how devices like SSDs or smartphones are built.

To fully saturate a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface — which provides up to 15.75 GB/s of effective bandwidth — a modern NAND flash setup requires an SSD controller with eight channels at 2400 MT/s, six channels at 3600 MT/s, or just four channels at 4800 MT/s. In a year or two, PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers won't require eight channels to fully saturate the hungry interface.

For PCIe 6.0 x4, which doubles throughput to around 31.5 GB/s effective (after protocol overhead), the number of required channels increases 16 at 2400 MT/s, 12 at 3600 MT/s, and eight at 4800 MT/s. As NAND I/O performance approaches these thresholds, high-end SSDs can exploit PCIe 6.0 capabilities with eight high-speed NAND devices. However, it remains to be seen whether PCIe 6.0 x4 SSDs will be a reality for consumer storage devices within the next few years.

Die capacities

Based on the roadmap data that we have collated, leading 3D NAND makers will converge, landing with 1 Tb and 2 Tb die capacities by around 2026 - 2027, particularly for 3D QLC products. While there are some 2Tb QLC NAND devices announced as of May 2025, none of them are actually on the market yet.

Micron, Kioxia/Western Digital, Samsung, SK Hynix, and YMTC all plan to offer 3D QLC devices reaching 2 Tb capacities, typically paired with interface speeds of 3200MT/s – 4800 MT/s over the next few years. Despite the significantly increased layer count, 3D NAND manufacturers are not jumping to capacities higher than 2Tbs per device for the time being, perhaps due to cost concerns.

Rising layer counts: How does each company stack up?

Kicking off with Kioxia and Western Digital, this duo's 3D NAND roadmap featured BiCS 6 with 162 layers across both TLC and QLC variants in the first half of 2023. BiCS 6 represents a mature and commercially proven node, used in mainstream SSDs and enterprise storage. This generation aligns with the industry’s transition toward high-density vertical stacking, while supporting a 2400 MT/s interface speed.

Kioxia and Western Digital didn't stop there, and in the second half of 2024, these companies introduced BiCS 8 in both TLC (BiCS 8T) and QLC (BiCS 8Q) forms, now featuring between 218 and 232 layers. This generation continues to rely on 2400 MT/s – 3600 MT/s interfaces, marking both vertical and performance scaling. Also, it demonstrates Kioxia’s intent to advance QLC’s competitiveness in both storage density and performance.

BiCS 8 will be a fairly long-standing node for Kioxia and Western Digital, as it will be replaced in the first half of 2027. BiCS 9T is set to replace it, boasting a layer count of greater than 300, representing quite an aggressive step forward. This milestone puts Kioxia in alignment with other vendors’ 3D NAND scaling targets, while also introducing 4800 MT/s interface speeds.

Micron’s lineup includes the now legendary B58 IC with 232 layers and a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate. But its 1st Gen ICs featured a lower rate; its full speed was only achieved sometime in the first half of 2023. Nevertheless, the B58 gave Micron an early lead in vertical scaling versus competitors still shipping 162–192 layer products.

In the second half of 2024, Micron advanced to the B68S IC, increasing the layer count to 276. This generation pairs higher density with elevated performance (3600 MT/s), making it a major step in Micron’s 3D NAND roadmap, and making the company one of the leading makers of enthusiast-grade SSDs with the model 4600.

In the first half of 2027, Micron is expected to introduce its B78 3D TLC NAND ICs, with a 4800 MT/s interface. However, the exact layer count is not known. Given the trend from B58 (232L) to B68S (276L), it is reasonable to expect B78 to reach well beyond 300 layers, likely on par with Kioxia’s and Samsung’s leading nodes. However, there are no official materials on exact layer counts, so this remains speculation.

When it comes to 3D NAND makers, Samsung is a rare animal. All producers of flash memory prefer to sell their chips as parts of their own devices, such as SSDs, and to that end, Micron works closely with Silicon Motion and Phison to optimize controllers for its memory and drives. In a similar vein, Kioxia works with Phison. Unlike its rivals, Samsung has its own 3D NAND and controllers to build its SSDs and other products using NAND flash memory. The company also sells its 3D NAND ICs on the open market as an additional boon.

Samsung offered its V8T IC in 2023 H2 with 236 layers, placing it alongside Micron’s B58 and slightly ahead of Kioxia’s BiCS 6. This node continues to be Samsung’s workhorse today.

By the second half of 2025, Samsung is set to mass produce V9T, scaling to 286 layers — a 50-layer jump over V8T. This milestone indicates V9T’s interface speed remains at 3600 MT/s, indicating a controlled ramp before moving to more aggressive performance targets.

Looking ahead to 2026 H1, Samsung’s roadmap lists V10T IC with an expected layer count of over 400, representing the most ambitious vertical target. While this node’s interface speed is also pegged at 4800 MT/s, its standout feature is the sheer layer height, suggesting multi-tier stacking and next-gen integration techniques, such as string stacking and hybrid bonding. However, Samsung has not officially announced that it is using any of those specific techniques quite yet.

SK hynix’s current product lineup includes the V8T IC with 238 layers, a 2400 MT/s interface, and has been available since the second half of 2023, marking their entry into late-Gen 3D NAND scaling. The next major leap occurs with V9T, reaching 321 layers in the first half of 2025, and then increasing interface performance to 3600 MT/s by the second half of 2025.

This shows a rapid vertical scaling effort while improving I/O bandwidth. The company's most ambitious node, V10T, is set to debut in 2027 H1, with 500 layers and a 4800 MT/s interface — matching top-tier bandwidth targets from other vendors, and surpassing them in vertical stack height. The roadmap extends further to V11T (4800 MT/s), though its layer count is not explicitly known.

On the QLC side, SK hynix’s roadmap begins with V7Q in the first half of 2024 at 176 layers, then it extends to V9Q, which delivers 3200 MT/s performance and a 2 Tb die capacity — implying a 300L+ stack. By the first half of 2027, QLC products are also expected to adopt the 500-layer structure (V10Q) at 4800 MT/s, mirroring TLC’s configuration.

When it comes to layer counts, China-based YMTC is not a leader, but its 3D NAND development shows a clear trajectory from mid-tier to high-tier stacking. YMTC’s 3D TLC product (X4-9060) features 128 layers and a 3600 MT/s interface, and was followed quickly by X3-9070 in the second half of 2024. X3-9070 jumped to 232 layers while maintaining the same data transfer rate. This indicates a rapid scaling of vertical density — despite sanctions by the U.S. government. This is likely enabled by the company’s proprietary Xtacking architecture, which separates logic and memory layers to simplify integration. However, no QLC-specific layer counts are known for now.

By 2026 – 2027, YMTC’s roadmap aims to enter the high-performance class of its competitors. The X5-9080 and X5-9070 3D TLC NAND products operate at 4800 MT/s, and the latter is explicitly listed as a 1 Tb die, suggesting a likely move to 300+ layers, although exact counts are not known. Meanwhile, the company’s 3D QLC line (e.g., X4-6080, X5-6080) appears on the roadmap in parallel, also reaching 4800 MT/s by the second half of 2026, hinting at comparable architectural advances.

YMTC’s roadmap outlines a fast-paced rise from 128L to 232L and potentially 300L+ stacking within three years—driven by a balance of aggressive layer scaling and interface speed improvements across both TLC and QLC products.

What's next for 3D NAND?

The future of 3D NAND is defined by fairly aggressive vertical scaling, faster interfaces, and a push toward higher per-die capacities, which will enable products that will enable faster, denser, and more cost-efficient storage across consumer and enterprise segments. To make that happen, all major vendors are set to converge at a 4800 MT/s interface speed and 300–500-layer stacks by 2027.

However, this progress is not without complexity. Vertical scaling introduces new challenges in terms of yield, while higher speeds now also require logic process nodes, which raises manufacturing costs. Eventually, when everyone in 3D NAND manufacturing converges at hybrid bonding (which YMTC already uses, while sporting one of the industry’s widest patent portfolios). These techniques will add another layer of complexity, and companies will require some time to get used to these new processes.

In any case, the future of 3D NAND is bright, as the industry races towards faster speeds, higher stacks, and more complex manufacturing technology.

Kioxia and SanDisk have begun sample shipments of their ninth-generation BiCS FLASH, a NAND flash technology that blends legacy architectures with modern enhancements to create a bridge between the current BiCS8 generation and the forthcoming BiCS10. While BiCS10 is expected to deliver higher capacities through a cutting-edge 332-layer design, BiCS9 takes a more cost-optimized approach, targeting enterprise SSDs built for AI workloads and mid-tier storage solutions where efficiency and performance balance are key.

What sets BiCS9 apart is its hybrid construction, achieved through CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) technology. In this process, the logic and memory cell wafers are fabricated separately under optimized conditions before being bonded into a single, high-performance package. This innovation allows Kioxia to mix and match mature cell structures—such as a 112-layer BiCS5 or a 218-layer BiCS8—with a modern I/O interface. The result is a chip capable of delivering Toggle DDR 6.0 speeds of up to 3.6 Gb/s, with peak speeds reaching 4.8 Gb/s under controlled testing conditions.

Despite employing fewer layers than BiCS8 or the next-gen BiCS10, BiCS9 still brings meaningful upgrades. Write performance is up by 61%, read speeds improve by 12%, and power efficiency rises by 36% during writes and 27% during reads compared to previous 512 GB TLC designs. An 8% increase in bit density further underscores the careful engineering that allows BiCS9 to deliver strong performance without inflating costs.

Kioxia has introduced a solid-state drive with an unprecedented storage capacity of 245.76TB, currently the highest-capacity storage device available. The company positions its LC9 drive for applications that benefit from maximum storage density, such as AI training and hyperscale workloads. Remarkably, the company has managed to cram 8TB of storage capacity into a single NAND package —a record that enables the construction of such a hefty SSD using multiple ultra-high-capacity packages. To give some perspective on the sheer amount of storage, assuming a heavily compressed 20GB size for a 4K movie, the Kioxia drive could store an astounding 12,500 movies per device.

The Kioxia LC9 is based on an unknown proprietary NVMe 2.0-compliant controller with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface (with dual-port capability) as well as Kioxia's BiCS8 2Tb 3D QLC NAND memory devices. To enable a 245.76TB capacity in an E3.L form-factor, Kioxia had to package 32 memory devices into a single chip (8TB of storage space) and then attach those chips to the controller. This packaging sets a new record for density and uses the company's proprietary methods for wafer processing and assembly, according to Kioxia.

Performance-wise, the drive delivers sequential read speeds of up to 12 GB/s and write speeds of up to 3 GB/s. This isn't the highest performance for an enterprise PCIe 5.0 SSD, but there's an obvious tradeoff between capacity and performance. At the end of the day, ensuring signal integrity in a 32-Hi 3D NAND package is a big deal, so it is not surprising that it is achieved by sacrificing interface speed.

For random operations, the SSD achieves up to 1.3 million IOPS for reads and 50,000 IOPS for writes, which is again not particularly impressive, but the LC9 is clearly designed for capacity rather than performance.

As for endurance, the Kioxia L9 drives are rated at 0.3 drive writes per day (DWPD), which again reflects a balance between capacity and longevity for data center usage patterns.

Kioxia has introduced two generations of its XL-Flash storage class memory (SCM), a high-speed type of NAND memory originally designed to compete with Optane SSD technology by providing new levels of latency, performance, and endurance over standard flash-based storage. However, so far, only a few companies have released solid-state drives based on this type of NAND. This might change, as InnoGrit, a maker of SSD controllers, demonstrated a reference design PCIe 5.0 SSD based on XL-Flash memory at Computex that delivers up to an incredible 3.5 million random read IOPS. Therefore, there is a chance that independent makers of solid-state drives will release drives based on Kioxia's SCM.

InnoGrit's N3X SSD, based on the InnoGrit Tacoma IG5669 controller and Kioxia's 2nd Generation XL-Flash memory in SLC mode, is designed for latency-sensitive enterprise workloads that demand the utmost reliability. The NVMe 2.0-compliant controller supports a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and enables sustained performance of up to 14 GB/s sequential read speed and up to 12 GB/s sequential write speed, as well as up to 3.5 million random read IOPS and 700 thousand random write IOPS.

Perhaps more importantly, there's less than 13 microseconds of read latency, a huge reduction compared to the ~50 – 100 µs for 3D TLC NAND, and 4 µs write latency, another massive decrease compared to ~200 – 400 µs for 3D TLC NAND, which is particularly useful for caching, AI inference, in-memory computing, and real-time analytics.

Kioxia showed off its latest optical SSD technology at Computex 2025. According to the storage giant, this new solution offers several key advantages over conventional electrically connected SDDs. The most important benefit we saw was the ability to offer the same performance as a conventional SSD even if connected via optical cabling 30m long (or more). Kyocera was Kioxia’s partner in this demo, as the system used featured one of its Optinity PCIe cards.

Normally, a demo like this might yield eye-popping performance numbers. However, Kioxia showed its prototype running at the same performance as a conventional rival in terms of IOPS and bandwidth.

The special sauce here is all about the impressively extended reach, with cabling of up to 30m and beyond not impacting the SSD performance. Moreover, Kioxia stated that its slim and flexible connectors and cables were an advantage of its optical SSDs. Last but not least, these connections also offer “better signal integrity” over conventional electrical wiring, which can shrug off “challenging environments,” according to Kioxia.

If you look at the demo hardware, you may naturally question the assertion about slim and flexible connectors and cables. Kioxia told us that the large PCB you see attached to the CM7 Enterprise SSD will actually be miniaturized and shrunk to fit within the SSD shell. That seems like quite a feat considering the board is perhaps 150% the size of the CM7 Enterprise SSD at this time.

The recently imposed U.S. import duties are designed to affect the vast majority of industries, and the data storage industry is certainly not an exception. Because the underlying technologies of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, tape drives, and storage arrays are so different, the effects of tariffs could be diverse on all of them.

And it looks like HDD and SSD makers will suffer the most despite Trump’s 90-day suspension of country-specific tariffs starting April 10, whereas producers of tapes will rejoice, notes Blocks & Files.

HDDs

We are going to start with hard drives, as these are arguably the most technologically advanced storage devices with the most complex supply chain these days. There are three HDD makers: Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital.

Seagate's HDD operation involves product development in the U.S. and Singapore; head manufacturing in the United States and Northern Ireland; substrate production in Malaysia; media fabrication in Singapore or Japan (when Seagate sourced platters from Showa Denko); and drive and subassembly manufacturing in China and Thailand.

Toshiba's HDD supply chain involves R&D and high-value component manufacturing in Japan (as the company usually uses media from Showa Denko), with mass assembly and component integration primarily based in China, the Philippines, and Japan (high-end HDDs).

Western Digital develops its HDDs in the U.S. and Japan. Media substrates are produced in Malaysia, but the actual media manufacturing occurs in China or Japan (when Western Digital sources from Showa). Head wafers are processed in the U.S., but the final head-gimbal assembly takes place in the Philippines and Thailand. Actual HDDs are built in Malaysia and Thailand.

Although Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital have different supply chains, their setups are subject to risks of substantial U.S. import tariffs, particularly on drives produced in China (124%), Malaysia (24%), the Philippines (17%), and Thailand (36%). Perhaps, if Toshiba shifts more production to the Philippines, it can avoid paying extremely high tariffs in the U.S., but the situation for Seagate is more complicated as a significant portion of Seagate's drives are built in China. Keeping in mind that HDDs are assembled in cleanrooms, moving their assembly away from China or Thailand quickly will be expensive and complicated.

Considering the diverse supply chains of all three makers, it is likely that U.S. customs will charge import tariffs based on where the final HDDs are assembled. Seagate and Western Digital will likely increase their operations in the U.S. to prove that there is 20% of American content in their drives to cut down duties, though it remains to be seen whether they succeed.

SSDs

With SSDs, the situation is a bit different. There are only six companies in the world that produced 3D NAND memory in high-volume — Kioxia, Micron, Sandisk, Samsung, SK hynix, and YMTC — but there are dozens of SSD makers, most of which conduct operations in China and other countries with low labor costs.

Micron, Kioxia, and Sandisk are the only big makers of 3D NAND, which do not have wafer fabrication capacity in China. However, these companies use their Chinese facilities to test and package their flash memory. Under U.S. Customs law, the 'country of origin' is generally determined by the location of the last substantial transformation, the point where the product undergoes a major change. So, if a 3D NAND wafer is fabricated in Japan or Singapore but diced, tested, and packaged in China, the origin of flash is very likely to be considered China.

For now, this is not a problem as memory is now relieved from tariffs. However, Micron, Kioxia, and Sandisk produce SSDs in China and drives are considered 'finished goods' and are therefore dutiable. Hence, to avoid punitive tariffs from the U.S. government, these companies will have to start making their drives elsewhere to remain competitive in the U.S. This applies to third-party SSD makers too. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to establish assembly of SSDs as it does not require cleanrooms used to make 3D NAND memory or assemble HDDs.

The lion's share of Samsung's and SK hynix's 3D NAND is made in South Korea, but they also have 3D NAND production capacity in China, mostly to serve local demand for flash memory and SSDs. However, retail SSDs from Samsung and SK hynix are assembled in South Korea, so the U.S. Customs will likely deem them as Korean products subject to a 25% import tariff (a 15% country-specific tariff is suspended for 90 days effective April 10).

For obvious reasons, 3D NAND companies will unlikely ship products containing 3D NAND memory from China to the U.S. to avoid tariffs once semiconductors are slapped with import duties. However, it remains to be seen what SK Hynix's subsidiary Solidigm will do, considering the fact that it exclusively uses memory produced at the company's Dalian facility (which used to belong to Intel). If the U.S. government decides to impose prohibitive tariffs on 3D NAND chips made in China, Solidigm will be in trouble. The same applies to Micron, Kioxia, and Sandisk.

To avoid punitive country-specific tariffs when shipping SSDs to the U.S. once the country-specific tariffs are re-instated in 90 days following the April 9 pause, makers of SSDs will have to either assemble them in countries that are not subject to such import duties (e.g., those protected under the USMCA, such as Canada or Mexico), or will have to build them in the U.S. This will not relieve 3D NAND makers (or their customers) from paying import duties on memory and controller chips once they are imposed though. However, unlike makers of HDDs, SSD producers can change the origin of their products relatively easily.

Tape and optical discs

Tape drives and optical discs see different effects. IBM builds LTO tape drives in Arizona and escapes tariffs, aside from imported parts. Japan's Fujifilm makes tape in Massachusetts, so it is also safe, but Sony produces them in Japan, so it must deal with a 24% charge on tapes brought to the U.S.

Blu-ray and DVD discs are manufactured in China, India, Japan, and Taiwan. Each country's specific rate will apply when shipping these items to the U.S. and it is unlikely that anyone will relocate production of discs to America. What remains to be seen is how tariffs affect pre-recorded discs with games and movies.

Nvidia's GTC conference has focused heavily — almost exclusively — on AI this year. Everything shown seems to have an AI connection. And one thing we know about AI is that it needs a lot of memory, and a lot of storage to hold the increasingly large models. That's where Kioxia's new LC9 data center drive comes into play.

The LC9 uses Kioxia's BiCS 8 QLC NAND with 2 Tb dies. It's unclear how many dies are in a package, probably 16, yielding 4TB capacity packages. Even with that much density, you would still need 32 such packages to reach the 122.88 TB of capacity offered by the top LC9 model (leaving a decent amount of spare flash to help with performance and endurance).

What's new with the LC9 is that it's also a PCIe 5.0 compliant drive, and it's dual-port as well. That means it can function as a single x4 device, or it can alternatively run with two x2 links. Kioxia showed the drive running a sustained read test and pushing close to the interface's maximum 15 GB/s (give or take).

The drive isn't rated for massive amounts of data writes, with only a 0.3 DWPD (drive writes per day) endurance. That's still plenty, as it means with a 5 year warranty the drive can handle around 67,000 TBW, which is more than enough for read-intensive applications. In contrast, some data center drives are designed to accommodate multiple DWPD, especially those intended for write-heavy workloads, so the write endurance rating tells us the target usage for this drive.

The LC9 instead focuses on providing high read speeds for a lot of data. That's useful for AI models that continue to grow in size. With its voracious appetite for both memory and storage — and a lot of companies were talking about ways to offload portions of the AI stack to fast SSD storage — it feels like it's only a matter of time before someone creates a single LLM that will require the entire capacity of Kioxia's LC9 122.88 TB drive.

Phison was the first company to offer an SSD controller with a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface and was the indisputable leader in the market of enthusiast-grade SSDs for a couple of years. This week, the company cemented its lead by introducing its next-generation PCIe 5.0 SSD controller for the best high-end SSDs, the PS5028-E28. The new chip promises even higher performance and compatibility with next-gen 3D NAND.

The Phison PS5028-E28 is a brand-new, eight-channel controller that can work with upcoming types of 3D NAND featuring a 4200 MT/s interface and supports SSDs with a 32TB capacity. Regarding performance, the unit promises a maximum sequential read and write performance of 14.5 GB/s (the absolute maximum that a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface can offer) as well as a maximum random read and write performance of 3 million IOPS.

Due to its compatibility with next-generation 3D NAND memory, the Phison E28 controller will enable SSDs with capacities of up to 32TB, which is good enough for client PCs, workstations, and even entry-level datacenter applications.

Phison did not disclose many specifications for its new E28 controller. However, it is reasonable to expect it to have improved compute capabilities compared to the E26 to ensure compatibility with upcoming generations of 3D NAND memory and to provide enhanced functionality.

Phison uses TSMC's N6 process technology (6nm-class) to make its PS5028-E28 chip, which is a significant upgrade compared to TSMC's 12FFC (12nm-class) production node used to make the PS5026-E26 controller. The average power consumption of an E28-based SSD will be around 8.5W, which is slightly higher than the 7W advertised for E26-based drives. However, this is expected since NAND memory gets more complex and requires more processing to read reliably.

At its CES 2025 booth, Phison demonstrated E28-based SSDs with 3D TLC NAND memory from Kioxia (T2BIGB5A2V), which is unsurprising as the two companies work closely together. Over time, the controller will be qualified with 3D NAND memory from other makers, including Micron.

It is hard to say when exactly the actual SSDs based on Phison's PS5028-E28 controller will hit the market. Still, knowing how long it takes to qualify a new controller with advanced memory, we would speculate that the next-generation PCIe 5.0 x4 drives will be available a year from now.

Kioxia expects flash demand for NAND memory to increase 2.7 times by 2028, spurred by advances in artificial intelligence, Reuters reports. Kioxia will expand its manufacturing capacity and introduce new process technologies in the coming years to meet this upcoming demand.

The chipmaker is expanding its manufacturing capacity in Japan to support this anticipated growth. In particular, Kioxia is advancing construction at its Kitakami facility in Iwate prefecture, aiming for production by fall 2025 after a year-long delay. Production was initially planned for last year, but the timeline shifted due to the industry-wide drop in memory demand. This new capacity, combined with additional cleanroom space at its Yokkaichi plant, is expected to provide enough production bandwidth to address future market needs.

In October, Bain halted plans to list Kioxia on the stock market after potential investors urged a valuation cut. The company's new commentary aims to enhance investors' trust in long-term demand for 3D NAND memory in general and Kioxia's products in particular, as well as re-emphasize plans to kick off production at the company's second production facility in Kitakami.

Earlier this year, Kioxia resumed full-capacity production at its Yokkaichi and Kitakami fabs. The company had previously reduced production by over 30% starting in October 2022 due to weak demand for its 3D NAND memory used in smartphones. Demand for 3D NAND began to recover in the latter half of 2023 as memory inventories declined and the smartphone and PC markets slowly rebounded. Demand for memory chips used in these devices has now stabilized, with additional growth from datacenter orders.

As the demand for AI servers and datacenter-class storage devices grows, Kioxia can address both with 3D NAND flash memory and with enterprise-grade SSDs based on unique controllers and firmware. Other drivers that could lift demand for 3D NAND include on-device AI experiences, which require high-capacity high-performance local storage.

To bolster domestic production, the Japanese government has assigned up to $1.64 billion in subsidies for Kioxia and its partner, Western Digital, to expand their facilities in Yokkaichi and Kitakami. This move aligns with Japan's strategic objective to revitalize its semiconductor industry and position Kioxia as a key player in the global 3D NAND market.

As 3D NAND memory prices are falling due to weaker-than-expected demand in the IT sector, major flash makers are mulling adjusting their output and reducing investments in non-volatile memory, reports DigiTimes, citing South Korean media. Instead, they could invest more in DRAM production as demand for HBM memory from the AI industry is setting records.

Right now, all major makers of 3D NAND—Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix—are considering reducing the output of non-volatile memory and reducing investments in building out additional flash capacities. If they do it, this will stabilize the pricing of 3D NAND and may somewhat reduce the pricing of DRAM, at least in the short and mid-terms.

Given the current market conditions, companies like Samsung and SK Hynix focus on DRAM, where demand is stronger, particularly in AI. According to the report, they are exploring the possibility of converting parts of their NAND production lines to focus on DRAM in general and HBM in particular, including Samsung's potential conversion of its P4 line and SK Hynix's plans for its Cheongju M14, M15X, and M16 facilities.

Demand for PCs declined in 2H 2022 and 1H 2023, as did demand for 3D NAND memory. As a result, both PC makers and suppliers of SSDs got their hands full of NAND flash and ceased buying more memory. As a result, 3D NAND makers cut their production rates, and utilization rates of their flash production lines dropped from 20% to 30% in 2023. As demand for PCs grew and so did demand for non-volatile memory, 3D NAND manufacturers increased production, and their utilization rates rebounded to 80% - 90% in early 2024.

However, demand has remained subdued, especially for standard 3D NAND products, causing companies to adjust production gradually in line with market trends. High-capacity NAND devices are among the exceptions, but they still see consistent demand as AI and other data centers need high-capacity SSDs.

The IT industry had anticipated a boost in sales of PCs and mobile devices in the latter half of 2024, expecting a replacement cycle to drive up orders. Unfortunately, an economic downturn has dampened consumer confidence, delaying the expected surge in sales to the second half of 2025. This delay has forced manufacturers to reevaluate their production strategies, extend the timeline for inventory management, and consider more aggressive production cuts.

Kioxia has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, aiming for an October debut, reports Nikkei. The NAND flash maker aims to raise at least $500 million and could be valued at over $10 billion, according to Financial Times. Even after the IPO, the company will be controlled by Bain Capital, SK hynix, and Toshiba. 

Kioxia, the world's third largest supplier of NAND flash memory based on its performance in Q1 2024, as reported by TrendForce, has been seeking an IPO for a while and now that there is interest in stocks associated with the AI boom, it is time for its owners to capitalize on this. The company is currently 56% owned by a special-purpose entity created by Bain Capital and SK hynix (which can control up to 15% of Kioxia), while Toshiba retains a 41% stake. Both Bain and Toshiba intend to gradually reduce their stakes following Kioxia's public listing. 

This IPO marks Kioxia's second attempt to go public. The company had initially planned to list in 2020, but uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China led to a postponement. The decision to proceed now reflects an improved business climate and strong financial performance from Kioxia, which reported a record net profit of ¥69.8 billion ($477 million) in Q2 2024 and then ended production cutting. 

Last year Kioxia attempted to merge with Western Digital's NAND and SSD business. The goal was to create a strong contender against the current market leader Samsung, but the plan was halted due to objections of SK hynix.  

Despite its strong financials, Kioxia's $10.3 billion valuation is expected to be at a discount compared to Samsung and Western Digital. This discount reflects the company's position in the market (largely caused by its production-cutting tactics), its debt levels, and the need to offer attractive pricing to entice both global and domestic investors. 

Kioxia's IPO will occur amid Western Digital's split into two companies: a NAND and SSD maker and a hard drive maker. After the split, Western Digital's NAND company will control around 12% of the global NAND memory supply, leaving Kioxia with another 12%. The two companies will be considerably behind Samsung and SK hynix, and even if they had merged, they would only be comparable to SK hynix in terms of NAND market share.

Kioxia, one of the leading companies in SSDs, has announced a new Optical Interface SSD for Next-Generation Green Data Centers. This technology replaces the traditional electrical signals transmitted via copper wire with laser and optical data cables, allowing system builders to place storage drives up to 40 meters away from the CPU.

According to Kioxia's presentation, the longer distances between the compute systems, which generate a lot of heat, and the storage pool, which requires minimal cooling, would help data centers optimize their cooling and power requirements. Aside from this, Optical SSDs would require less space owing to their thinner and slimmer connectors compared to current technology. They're also less susceptible to electromagnetic interference, so you don't have to worry about shielding and cable placement.

Aside from these advantages, the optical SSD would allow disaggregation, where large storage pools are located away from the server units and are connected to each other via optical switching devices. This could further improve modularity, allowing data centers and hyperscalers to add more storage without affecting memory latency.

Kioxia also says that future PCIe generations may leverage optical interfaces for SSDs, as these allow for faster and more reliable data transmission. In fact, one company has already shown off an optical solution for PCIe 7.0, which could hit 128 GT/s. These developments would slowly push us away from using electricity and voltage to light to communicate between storage, memory, and compute systems.

Intel has also started working on optical technology for its chips, introducing an optical compute interconnect chiplet delivering 4 Tbps optical connectivity to CPUs or GPUs. And, to tie it all off, TSMC recently detailed its Compact Universal Photonic Engine (CPOUPE), which could enable motherboard-level optical interconnection that can hit up to 6.4 Tbps.

All of these technologies are developed with an eye towards data centers and AI, especially as our increasing demand for computing power is also coupled with the exponential increase in power consumption. By introducing optical interconnects between storage, memory, processors, and all other bits and bobs inside a high-performance PC, we could potentially make it far more power efficient without sacrificing performance.

TrendForce's latest report indicates that spot prices for both DRAM and NAND flash memory are unlikely to increase soon due to two reasons. First, there's plenty of inventory on the market. Second, the Chinese government's recent actions against smuggling of refurbished DRAMs has had a further effect on DRAM prices. 

In the DRAM market, spot prices continue decline, in a stark contrast to contract prices. This happens because of excessive inventory levels at module houses, which tend to buy DRAMs on the spot market. Also, weak consumer product markets contribute to the declining prices as makers of hardware do not need more memory than they already have and do not by on the spot market. 

Another major factor that contributes to the decline is the crackdown on smuggling in the Chinese market, which has caused reballed DRAM chip prices to drop further. Reballing is a technique used to repair DRAM chips by replacing the solder balls on the chip's underside, which are used to connect the chip to a circuit board. In many cases, this makes them work again, but such chips are not as reliable as new DRAM. 

Back to pricing. Since the end of May an average spot price of DDR4 1Gx8 2666MT/s chip decreased by 2.54%, falling from $1.881 to $1.835 in the past week alone. While the decreases may not seem significant, they are consistent. 

Similarly, the spot NAND flash market is experiencing weak transactions due to sufficient inventory levels at SSD makers (some of which produce the world's best SSDs), preventing a revival of demand despite price reductions by spot suppliers. This has already led to a continued divergence between spot and contract prices. Also, there is uncertainty regarding potential demand for inventory replenishment in Q3 2024. Notably, the spot price of a 512Gb 3D TLC NAND wafer dropped by 0.57% this week, reaching $3.309. 

In general, both DRAM and NAND flash sport memory markets face significant challenges in terms of pricing due to soft demand. TrendForce does not expect price recoveries in the short term due to market dynamics and external pressure, such as government crackdowns. 

Just earlier this week we reported that Kioxia ceased cutting production of its 3D NAND memory and is set to increase output, potentially to boost market share. This move alone could have major implications on 3D NAND supply and price.

Kioxia has resumed full production after 20 months of cuts. Improved market conditions are behind the changes, reports Nikkei. This potentially means that the world's fourth-largest maker of 3D NAND is back to competing for market share, which could mean price drops for flash memory. The company has also secured refinancing of ¥540 billion ($3.424 billion) and a new line of credit worth ¥210 billion ($1.332 billion) from its lenders. 

In June, Kioxia increased production to full capacity at its Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants, which produce NAND flash memory, the report says. The production cuts, which began in October 2022, were a response to declining demand for Kioxia's 3D NAND memory designed for smartphones, with reductions exceeding 30% at their peak. Additionally, the launch of a new fab at the Kitakami site has been delayed from 2023 to at least 2025. 

However, demand for 3D NAND began to pick up due to the depletion of memory inventory and the slow recovery of smartphone and PC markets, that began in the second half of 2023. By now, demand for chips used in smartphones and PCs has stabilized, while orders from data centers have increased. As a result, NAND prices are expected to rise by 13% to 18% in the April-June quarter. However, as 3D NAND makers begin to increase production, prices may stabilize and then decrease. 

Kioxia reported a net profit of ¥10.3 billion ($65.284 million) for the January-March quarter, marking its first profitable quarter in six quarters. A profitable quarter and a more favorable business environment prompted creditor banks to refinance significant loans and establish new credit facilities. 

The lending syndicate, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, MUFG Bank, and Mizuho Bank, has shown confidence in Kioxia's recovery by refinancing existing loans and providing new credit. They will also support the company in upgrading equipment that will enable migration to next-generation 3D NAND nodes. 

Kioxia and Western Digital plan a combined investment of ¥729 billion ($4.620 billion) to install more advanced production tools into its fabs, with the Japanese government subsidizing approximately one-third of the cost.  

Although Kioxia's plans to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange were delayed due to trade tensions and market conditions, the company is now focusing on this listing to raise necessary funds, which is a good sign for lenders. 

In a rather unexpected turn of events, Western Digital (WD) has teased the industry's first 2Tb 3D QLC NAND device at an investor conference ahead of its official announcement. The new flash memory could potentially reshape the high-capacity solid-state drives market, enabling much faster and larger SSDs that consume less power. The device uses the proven 218-layer BiCS8 production node and is so tiny it can fit on a fingertip. WD also shared plenty of comparative performance data, touting power, density, and I/O performance gains over competing flash.

"I am really excited to share with you a preview of the BiCS8 2Tb 3D QLC die," said Robert Soderbery, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Western Digital's Flash Business. "We have designed this die to meet the data center and AI storage needs. We are going to shortly announce this product, but I want to share it with you today. This happens to be the world's highest-capacity memory die."

A 2Tb (256GB) 3D QLC NAND die is indeed a huge achievement, as the 'base' product that Western Digital introduced on its 218-layer BiCS8 production technology is a 1Tb 3D TLC device. At this point, we have no idea about the exact architecture of the 2Tb IC, such as the speed of its interface (it is probably fast), or the number of planes, or its latency. However, the company did share detailed comparative performance and power metrics (below), and given the fact that the company positions the device for data centers in general and AI storage needs in particular, one can make some assumptions about its performance targets. 

Now, a 256GB 3D QLC NAND device would allow manufacturers to build a 1TB SSD using just four memory ICs and a 2TB drive using eight devices, which greatly lowers their costs. Creating a 16-die package would enable a stunning 4TB in a single chip package.

Thus, assuming that Western Digital (and its manufacturing partner Kioxia) can produce these 2Tb 3D QLC NAND ICs in high volume and with decent yields, the new device can redefine the cost of high-capacity solid-state drives.

As you can see in the album above, WD says its QLC die density is 15 to 19% denser than the competition. It also claims to be 50% faster than competing NAND (I/O speed) while requiring 13% less power to program per gigabyte of data than competitors. You can also see the method the company uses to create the die — WD creates a die with only the CMOS control circuitry and another with the stacked memory cells, then flips the latter over and bonds the two devices together using hybrid bonding technology (much like Chinese fab YMTC's Xtacking tech).

"We typically show you a wafer, but I felt like the view of a wafer does not quite convey what we have achieved," said Sodebery. "So, if you allow me for a quick second, I want to show you the die. I have one here. Please zoom in [on] what I am holding on my finger here. This is the size of the die, much smaller than my fingertip." 

Western Digital plans to formally announce its 2Tb 3D QLC NAND device soon, so we'll likely learn more detailed specifications soon.

Kioxia plans to mass produce 3D NAND memory with over 1,000 layers by 2031, according to the company's chief technology officer (CTO), Hidefumi Miyajima, reports Xtech Nikkei. During his lecture at the 71st Applied Physics Society Spring Meeting at Tokyo City University, Miyajima discussed the technical challenges and solutions for achieving over 1000 layers in a 3D NAND device.

Increasing the number of active layers in a 3D NAND device is the best way to boost the recording density of flash memory nowadays, so all 3D NAND makers strive to do this with new process nodes every 1.5 to 2 years. Each new node brings several challenges, as 3D NAND makers have to increase the number of layers and shrink NAND cells both laterally and vertically. This process requires manufacturers to adopt new materials with every new node, which is a major research and development challenge.

Today, Kioxia's best 3D NAND device is 8th Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory with 218 active layers and a 3.2 GT/s interface (first introduced in March 2023). This generation introduces a novel CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) architecture, which involves separate manufacturing of the 3D NAND cell array wafers and I/O CMOS wafers using the most suitable process technology and bonding them together. The result is a product with enhanced bit density and improved NAND I/O speed, which ensures that the memory can be used to build the best SSDs. 

Meanwhile, specifics about the CBA architecture, such as whether the I/O CMOS wafers include additional NAND peripheral circuitry like page buffers, sense amplifiers, and charge pumps, have not been disclosed by Kioxia and its manufacturing partner Western Digital. By producing memory cells and peripheral circuits separately, manufacturers can leverage the most efficient process technologies for each component, leading to further advantages as the industry progresses towards methods like string stacking, which will certainly be used for 1,000-layer 3D NAND. 

It should be noted that Samsung also expects to achieve production-level 1,000-layer 3D NAND.

Japanese 3D NAND maker Kioxia has proposed a deal to its investor SK Hynix (which also happens to be its rival 3D NAND maker from South Korea), offering it to produce non-volatile memory at Kioxia's fabs in Japan, Reuters reports citing Jiji news agency. This move aims to make SK Hynix change its mind regarding Kioxia's merger plan with Western Digital. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether SK Hynix gets interested.

The negotiations between Kioxia and Western Digital had come to a halt last year when SK Hynix, a South Korean company, expressed opposition to forming a large 3D NAND memory chip conglomerate between the American and Japanese companies. SK Hynix had reasons to stop the merger because Kioxia and Western Digital would create a player massively larger than SK Hynix.

To overcome this obstacle and secure SK Hynix's support, Kioxia has suggested allowing SK Hynix to use its Japanese 3D NAND fabs operated jointly by Kioxia and Western Digital for chip production. This strategic offer is intended to pave the way for the merger's approval, ultimately creating a large player in the global 3D NAND memory chip market.

With some extra capacity from Kioxia, SK Hynix could significantly boost its 3D NAND memory output without investing in expanding its fabs or building new ones, which seems like an attractive deal in general. Meanwhile, the financial terms of such a deal are entirely unknown.

The combined company between Kioxia and Western Digital would control roughly one-third (31.4%) of the global 3D NAND market by revenue, according to Q3 2023 market shares tracked by TrendForce. This is significantly higher than SK Hynix's share of 20.2% and is comparable to Samsung's share of 31.4%. Meanwhile, even if part of Kioxia's (or instead the merged entity's) production capacity goes to SK Hynix, the new company will likely be larger than the South Korean memory giant, which is why the latter may still consider it a significant threat.

It should be noted that neither Kioxia nor SK Hynix have confirmed talks about capacity, so the information should be taken with a grain of salt.

Japan's industry ministry announced that it will be adding more subsidies for Kioxia and Western Digital, promising 242.9 billion yen (US$ 1.64 billion) to build two state-of-the-art facilities to mass produce NAND memory chips and fulfil the needs for AI and data center applications. This includes 92.9 billion in subsidies previously approved in 2022, so there's an additional 150 billion yen overall.

Once construction is completed in the Mie and Iwate prefecture, the facilities will make 218-layer 3D NAND chips for the respective markets. The ministry believes that with this investment, it would reclaim its reputation as a major chip manufacturing hub.

This will also enable the country to secure chip supply as trade relations between China and the United States remain tense. Industry Minister Ken Saito told Reuters, "The more data is used, the more memory consumption will increase so in that sense global demand will surely grow in accordance with NAND's characteristics." He also stated, "Japan and the US will work together to fulfil the responsibility of supplying memory products needed by the world."

Western Digital and Kioxia were planning to merge a few months ago, but SK Hynix objected a few days after the announcement as the proposal would undervalue its investment, leading to the merger plans being cancelled the next day. Regardless, Japan has had its own goals in place with these companies since 2022, so it increased the subsidies to help overcome the downturn in the NAND market that occurred last year.

A gold rush in the NAND market?

The need for higher-performing and higher-capacity memory has always created a certain demand from the worldwide market, but with the ever-growing use of generative AI and data centers around the world, the demands must be met. Japan also believes that it will generate 9,000 jobs in the region as a result of this investment.

It's common for countries to subsidize and invest in manufacturing facilities for leading companies. Through these plants, shipments are expected to begin in September 2025, though experts believe it could take longer.

The United States has also been doing the same with Intel, Samsung, and SK Hynix. Under the CHIPS Act, Samsung and SK Hynix can only operate their existing facilities in China, while newer facilities will be made in the United States. Intel and TSMC are also getting subsidies from the United States for near-future plants. The U.S will also be a major hub for GPU packaging, as Nvidia will also be using Intel's foundry for GPU packaging production.

Japan, the U.S., and other countries are all aiming to boost chip manufacturing facilities in their respective regions, aiming to dramatically decrease dependency on plants located in China. But even with sanctions, China is making its plans to secure its future in generative AI applications for multiple fields, though Intel CEO Gelsinger claims China will remain ten years behind for the foreseeable future.

In a collaboration with Hewlett Packard, Kioxia (Formerly Toshiba Memory Corporation) now has its M.2 and SAS SSDs in use on the International Space Station as a part of the Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2) program. The HPE Edgeline EL4000 will be using eight 1TB XG6 M.2 SSDs and the HPE DL360 Gen10 server will have a combination of four 960GB RM5 2.5-inch and four M6 2.5-inch SSDs with an impressive 30.72TB storage space.

This is effectively an upgrade to the HPE SBC-2, which was launched in 2021, abd delivered to the station via Northrup Grumman's 20th re-supply mission rocket. Kioxia SSDs is a sponsor of the SBC-2 program and also had its SSDs used in this system last year.

This computer is the first in-space commercial edge computing and AI-enabled system to be used on the ISS. The primary objective is to have advanced computing and reduce dependency on mission control on Earth. With such systems, the astronauts can process data on the ISS rather than having to send the raw data back to Earth and wait for it to be analyzed and sent back. Hence having such an array of SSDs, including a set of four 30.72TB drives is crucial.

Primary Use of the SBC-2 Computers

The SBC-2 will used for multiple workloads, but is already used for making progress in health, image processing, natural disaster recovery, 3D printing, 5G, AI and other applications. Hence, it's no surprise that flash-based SSDs are preferred over traditional HDDs, especially with the PM6 series having up to a 30.72TB storage capacity variant.

HPE worked with NASA on its previous Spaceborne computer with the same intent to process data on-site. Therefore, there's no surprise HPE is used in its SBC-2 program. 

As space exploration continues to advance, the need to have reliable and quicker on-site computers and storage. Hence it's no surprise that space agencies like NASA would collaborate with HP Enterprise to have purpose-built systems to work on the station and have it routinely maintained and upgraded.

Plextor is one of the legendary names in client PC storage and has been associated with high quality and performance for nearly three decades. But it looks like Kioxia thinks differently, as it has decided to shut down the Plextor brand for SSDs and use the Solid State Storage Technology (SSSTC) trademark instead, according to a report by HKEPC. SSSTC will focus solely on drives for enterprise, datacenter, and industrial applications.

The GoPlextor.com website has already been shutdown, and Plextor.com leads to SSSTC.com — which only lists products for enterprise, datacenter, and industrial applications and no longer lists consumer SSDs. 

SSSTC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kioxia, which makes 3D NAND memory and various NAND flash-based products, including SSDs and memory cards. Kioxia obtained SSSTC from Lite-On, which decided to get rid of its solid-state storage business in 2019. It sold this unit for $165 million to Toshiba Memory, which was renamed Kioxia later that year. Plextor used to make some of the best SSDs. 

The main values of Lite-On's SSD unit were its capable R&D team, the brand's reputation for reliability and high performance among PC enthusiasts, and its well-established business relations with channel and OEM clients. 

Meanwhile, success of Plextor's SSDs was largely driven by the success of Marvell's SSD controllers and Plextor's ability to design competitive firmware. But Marvell was late to market with PCIe Gen4 and PCIe Gen5 controllers as its developers fled to InnoGrit. Unlike its rivals, Plextor never adopted Phison's platforms, but started relying on controllers from InnoGrit, Marvell, and Silicon Motion, which meant that the company had to disperse its resources and design three different branches of firmware — not a particularly good way of using limited resources. As a consequence, the value of the Plextor brand dropped among enthusiasts, and Kioxia has decided to kill it off instead of reviving it. 

In fact, from now on, Kioxia's SSSTC will no longer offer client SSDs at all, and will instead focus on enterprise, datacenter, and industrial drives. Kioxia itself will, of course, continue to provide SSDs for client applications, but the company is somewhat behind its rivals: it still does not have a single drive with a PCIe 5.0 interface, while many of its rivals have already launched two generations. 

SSSTC will continue to offer RMA services to current owners of Plextor drives, but don't expect new Plextor-branded products to emerge in the future. Something similar happened to the OCZ brand, which was also abandoned by Toshiba (the ancestor of Kioxia) in favor of its own brand SSDs. 

Plextor will be missed since the brand has been known for its excellent optical disk drivers and SSDs for over 30 years.

The merger discussions between Western Digital and Kioxia Holdings have been conclusively terminated, Nikkei reports. Western Digital notified Kioxia about scrapping the possible transaction citing the failure to obtain approval from SK Hynix, a significant indirect shareholder of Kioxia, and disagreements over merger terms with Bain Capital, Kioxia's main shareholder. 

Western Digital and Kioxia, holding the fourth and second positions in the global NAND flash memory market, respectively, planned to consolidate their NAND operations under one roof to create the world's largest maker of NAND memory and potentially enhance their competitive standing and profitability. The envisioned merger was seen as a strategic move to rival Samsung Electronics' market dominance by leveraging the companies' combined resources and capabilities as well as eliminating competition between the companies that co-own production facilities and jointly develop NAND flash memory.

However, the merger faced substantial opposition from SK Hynix, the world's third largest NAND supplier with a 17.8% market share. Having invested around $2.667 billion (at current rates) in a consortium led by Bain Capital that previously acquired Kioxia in 2018, SK Hynix expressed concerns that the proposed merger would adversely impact its market position and future collaboration opportunities with Kioxia. This opposition proved to be a pivotal obstacle, preventing the realization of the merger.

"The company is not agreeing to the deal at this time, in light of the overall impact on the value of the company's investment in Kioxia," said Kim Woo-Hyun, chief financial officer of SK Hynix, at the company's earnings call (via SeekingAlpha). "Please understand that we cannot disclose the specific reasons or comment on the deal process due to the confidentiality agreements with Bain. But I do wish to make one thing clear, we will be making the decision for the sake of all stakeholders, not only the shareholders but also Kioxia as well."

Despite the discontinuation of merger talks, Western Digital and Kioxia will continue to jointly operate fabs and develop NAND flash memory and next-generation production nodes. 

SK Hynix has voiced its objections to the rumored merger between Kioxia Holdings Corp. and Western Digital. The South Korean maker of memory, which holds a stake in Kioxia, believes that the current terms of the proposed merger undervalue its investment. This opposition adds a layer of complexity and uncertainty to the merger discussions, which have been ongoing for some time. Meanwhile, SK Hynix essentially confirmed that the talks are ongoing. 

"The company is not agreeing to the deal at this time, in light of the overall impact on the value of the company's investment in Kioxia," said Kim Woo-Hyun, chief financial officer of SK Hynix, at the company's earnings call (via SeekingAlhpa). "Please understand that we cannot disclose the specific reasons or comment on the deal process due to the confidentiality agreements with Bain. But I do wish to make one thing clear, we will be making the decision for the sake of all stakeholders, not only the shareholders but also Kioxia as well."

For now, it looks like the company's disagreement stems from concerns about the valuation of its stake in the merger, and it is currently seeking a resolution that aligns with the interests of all stakeholders involved.

SK Hynix contributed ¥395 billion ($2.628 billion as of 2023) when it participated in the acquisition of Toshiba’s memory chip unit in 2018. From this amount, SK Hynix allocated ¥129 billion ($857.96 million) towards convertible bonds, based on a prior agreement. The remaining ¥266 billion ($1.768 billion) from the Korean company was invested in a fund established by Bain Capital. This arrangement could enable SK Hynix to convert these bonds into an equity interest of up to 15% in the future. Meanwhile, SK Hynix's share in the new company will be negligible.

There is another reason why SK Hynix may be concerned about the new entity. SK Hynix controlled 17.8% of the NAND market in Q2 2023, according to TrendForce. Meanwhile, combined NAND market share of Kioxia and Western Digital in Q2 was 34.3%, outshining Samsung’s 31.1% share significantly and distantly ahead of SK Hynix.

Despite the opposition from SK Hynix, the merger negotiations between Kioxia and Western Digital continue, with the involved parties aiming to reach an agreement soon, reports Bloomberg. The merger, if successful, is seen as a strategic move to enhance the competitive positioning of the two companies in the global memory chip market, allowing them to better compete with industry giants. The companies are hopeful to finalize the deal by the end of October, marking a significant milestone in the memory chip industry.

Kioxia and Western Digital Corp. are on the cusp of finalizing their merger, anticipated to be agreed upon as early as this month, according to Kyodo News. This union is poised to make the combined entity the world's largest maker of NAND flash memory. 

The proposed ownership structure of the new conglomerate has been meticulously planned. Western Digital shareholders are projected to hold a majority stake, surpassing 50%, while the remaining ownership will be attributed to Kioxia shareholders, including a notable contribution from Toshiba Corp. Initially, the leadership and executive roles are expected to be dominated by Kioxia's team, but that is expected to change over time.

The strategic collaboration involves the formation of a holding company, integrating their expertise in NAND flash memory chip production, with a vision of listing the new conglomerate on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the U.S. Western Digital aims to own 51% of the new entity. The remaining 49% will be distributed among Kioxia’s shareholders, including Toshiba, which owns 40% of Kioxia. As a result, Toshiba is expected to own approximately 19.6% of the new entity.

In the competitive arena of NAND memory production, the merger signifies a monumental shift. Together, Kioxia and Western Digital are set to overshadow the current leader, Samsung Electronics, by commanding a formidable market share. Their combined prowess in NAND memories is anticipated to reach around 34.3%, a figure that eclipses Samsung’s 31.1% stake as of Q2 2023, according to TrendForce. Meanwhile, the new entity will be significantly bigger than SK Hynix, which owns a stake in Kioxia. The South Korean company controlled 17.8% of the NAND market in the second quarter, so the formation of a bigger player might become a challenge for SK Hynix. 

Navigating the regulatory landscape presents a formidable challenge to the success of the merger. The global emphasis on semiconductors' economic security role has intensified, casting a shadow of uncertainty over regulatory approvals. Particularly, the stance of Chinese authorities remains an important consideration, given the geopolitical and economic implications of the 3D NAND memory market. 

A consortium of major Japanese banks, including MUFG Bank and the Development Bank of Japan, are contemplating a robust financial package. This package, potentially reaching up to 1.9 trillion yen ($12.7 billion), is aimed at nurturing the merger to fruition.

While reports about Western Digital's plan to consolidate its NAND memory business with Kioxia have been circulating for months, neither of the companies has commented on the potential transaction, for obvious reasons.

Western Digital is on the brink of consolidating its NAND memory business with Kioxia, creating the world's largest maker of non-volatile memory, according to Nikkei. The plans, which involve spinning off Western Digital's flash business unit, are about to be finalized, but the details are still under deliberation. If everything goes as intended, the merger will involve substantial financial backing from major Japanese banks. 

This strategic move aims to bolster the competitive stance of Western Digital and Kioxia in the NAND memory market. Kioxia is slated to hold a preliminary majority stake in the proposed organizational structure of the merged entity, which will be headquartered in Japan. However, subsequent capital adjustments are expected to equalize ownership between the two companies. 

Financing the merger involves a significant capital influx, primarily from major Japanese banks. The financial institutions are contemplating a substantial investment, ranging between ¥1.5 trillion ($9.357 billion) and ¥1.9 trillion ($12.699), to facilitate the consolidation. This financial support is crucial for the realization of the merger, enabling the companies to navigate the competitive and technological landscapes of the semiconductor industry. 

However, the merger's journey towards fruition is laden with challenges, including opposition from influential stakeholders like SK Hynix and regulatory scrutiny, particularly from China's antitrust authorities. The regulatory landscape presents uncertainties, with stringent antitrust evaluations and geopolitical considerations, such as U.S. export restrictions, influencing the merger's viability. 

The collaboration aims to enhance the global competitiveness of both firms, positioning them robustly against market leaders such as Samsung Electronics in the NAND memory sector. Meanwhile, the merged entity will naturally challenge SK Hynix and Micron. 

In Q2 2023, Kioxia owned a 19.6% stake in the NAND memory market, while Western Digital secured a 14.7% share, according to TrendForce. Samsung and SK Hynix also held substantial shares, with 31.1% and 17.8% respectively. Given these statistics, the prospective merger of Kioxia and Western Digital is set to become a dominant force in the global NAND memory market, potentially commanding a combined market share of over 34.3%.

Western Digital's acquisition of Kioxia from Bain Capital and Toshiba, forming a huge maker of 3D NAND memory may be getting closer. It seems that major Japanese banks are gearing up to offer a loan of ¥2 trillion ($14 billion) to the American company, according to a Bloomberg report. This move can be considered as a significant step towards the merger, which has experienced several setbacks.

Three Japanese banks — Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group — are at the forefront of this financing initiative. They are set to present a commitment letter in October. Of the total loan amount, ¥400 billion is expected to be sourced through loan commitments. The lion's share of the loan, ¥1.3 trillion, will be divided equally among these three banks, while the Development Bank of Japan will contribute the remaining ¥300 billion.

A portion of this loan is intended to distribute special dividends to Kioxia’s present shareholders, Bain Capital and Toshiba, which own 56.24% and 40.64% of the company, respectively. In the proposed merger structure, Western Digital is set to control about 50.5% of the combined entity, leaving Kioxia with the residual 49.5%. Meanwhile, management of the combined entity will reportedly be led primarily by Kioxia's executive team, even though there will also be people from Western Digital as well. 

However, the merger is not without its challenges. The discussions, initially targeted for conclusion in August, have been prolonged due to intricate details. There's a looming uncertainty about the merger's finalization, with concerns that it might either be postponed further or not materialize at all. If the latter occurs, the banks have indicated they will not proceed with the discussed loan. Adding to the complexity of the merger talks is Toshiba's impending buyout. 

In the first quarter of 2023, Kioxia held a 21.5% market share in NAND memory, and Western Digital had a 15.2% share, as reported by TrendForce. Meanwhile, Samsung accounted for 34% of the NAND memory market during that timeframe. Considering these figures, the potential combined force of Kioxia and Western Digital in the flash sector is poised to emerge as the top NAND memory supplier globally, boasting a market share exceeding 36.7%.

The Compute Express Link technology allows for building various devices to address a vast array of workloads, from expanding memory subsystem capacity and performance to offering ultra-fast persistent storage. Being one of the world's leading makers of NAND memory, Kioxia can address the latter. Recently, it demonstrated its 3D NAND and XL-Flash-based CXL solutions at the Flash Memory Summit 2023, as reported by ServeTheHome. 

Kioxia revealed plans to offer two lineups of its CXL products: CXL + XL-Flash-based devices for performance and reliability-centric applications such as in-memory databases and AI inference workloads, as well as CXL + BiCS 3D NAND-powered devices for capacity-hungry applications like Big Data and AI training. In both cases, storage devices use a special controller and CXL.mem protocol for reading and CXL.io protocol for writing to minimize respective latencies.

Regarding demonstrations, Kioxia showed a sample of a 1.3 TB CXL 1.1/CXL 2.0 BiCS 3D NAND-based device in an E1.S form-factor that can be installed into an E3.S chassis for higher performance/thermal capacity. The device uses a PCIe x4 interface (PCIe Gen5, we presume), though Kioxia does not disclose its performance characteristics, perhaps because the development has not finished.

While usage of a low-latency 3D (TLC) NAND-powered device over a PCIe interface with the CXL protocol on top seems like a very plausible idea, usage of an XL-Flash-based storage device promises to be even more fruitful due to the higher performance of XL-Flash compared to commodity 3D NAND.

Kioxia's proprietary 1st Generation XL-Flash is essentially single-level cell (SLC) NAND spread over 16 planes, whereas 2nd Generation XL-Flash is multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory spread over a higher number of planes, which by definition offers lower latency and higher parallelism for read/write operations, thus guaranteeing massively higher performance compares to mainstream 3D TLC NAND. 

Last year Kioxia said that its CXL storage devices would use its 2nd Generation XL-Flash, which promises to outperform the 1st Generation XL-Flash while being more cost-effective and thus enabling higher capacities. 

For now, Kioxia remains tight-lipped when it plans to ship its CXL devices featuring commodity 3D NAND and proprietary storage-class XL-Flash memory. Still, based on the fact that it is displaying some of the former products and does not showcase the latter (at least openly), we can assume that 3D NAND-based devices will be available a bit earlier.

Kioxia on Monday introduced one of the industry's first families of solid-state drives for hyperscalers featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and capacities of up to 30.72TB. The CD8P line-up of SSDs is designed for mixed use and read intensive workloads and feature all the reliability features that one comes to expect from datacenter-grade SSDs designed to work for 24/7.

Kioxia's single-port CD8P solid-state drives come in E3.S and U.2 form-factors and offer a wide range of capacities starting at 1.6 TB and ending at 30.72 TB. As for performance, the manufacturer rates the drives at up to 12,000 MB/s sequential read speed, up to 5,500 MB/s sequential write speed, up to 2,000,000 random read 4K IOPS, and up to 400,000 random write 4K IOPS. 

The new drives are a bit slower than enterprise-grade CM7 SSDs launched a year ago. Those drives are designed for enterprise workloads and have different performance (up to 14,000 MB/s) and feature set requirements (e.g., dual-port, FIPS SED). 

The new CD8P SSDs use Kioxia's proprietary SSD platform consisting of its own NVM 2.0-compliant controller, firmware, and 112-layer BICS 5 3D TLC NAND memory that supports the company's 7th Generation flash die failure protection to ensure reliable data storage, power loss protection, and end-to-end data protection. In addition to regular CD8P models, Kioxia will also offer SKUs supporting Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE) and Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) capabilities. Meanwhile, CD8P will not be available with FIPS SED capability.

It should ne noted that Kioxia will offer its CD8P SSDs in two types of configurations: the CD8P-V for mixed-use workloads (up to three drive writes per day) will come with 1.60 TB, 3.20 TB, 6.40 TB, and 12.8 TB capacities, whereas the CD8P-R for read-intensive applications (up to one drive writes per day) will be offered in 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB, and 30.72 TB capacities. 

While Kioxia is introducing its new CD8P SSDs at the Flash Memory Summit and plans to show them up and running at the show, it does not disclose when these drives are set to be available. Given that they are aimed mostly at hyperscalers, Kioxia will ship them once its customers validate and qualify them in their environments.

Following months of negotiations, Western Digital and Kioxia are on the brink of finalizing a merger agreement, according to Bloomberg, which cites sources with knowledge of the matter. The agreement involves spinning off Western Digital's NAND flash business and combining it with Kioxia.

The merger details remain confidential, but the report claims that Western Digital shareholders would gain control of slightly more than half of the joined company. As for the daily management of the combined entity, it has been suggested that it will be led primarily by Kioxia's executive team. However, Western Digital executives would also play a significant role. 

Notwithstanding the advanced negotiations, the final agreement is not yet in place, and the timeline could change. In fact, discussions may conclude without an agreement at all. 

The merged company will have a dual board representation system with both chipmakers contributing members. The company will be based in Japan and initially listed on the Nasdaq, with plans to eventually list in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Bain Capital, a major investor in Kioxia, would receive a special dividend. 

Despite producing 3D NAND at the same fabs, Kioxia and Western Digital, each maintains their distinct business strategies, with Kioxia's primary focus being on sales of the memory chips. In contrast, Western Digital's approach leans towards supplying finished NAND-based products, including some of the best SSDs available.  

As of Q1 2023, Kioxia commanded a 21.5% stake in the NAND memory, while Western Digital secured a 15.2% share, according to TrendForce. On the other hand, Samsung distributed 34% of NAND memory during the same period. With this in mind, the prospective merged entity of Kioxia and Western Digital's flash businesses is set to become the leading supplier of NAND memory worldwide, with over 36.7% of the market share. 

Flash NAND producer Kioxia has announced that it is preparing the BG6 Series of client SSDs. These are touted to deliver an impressive 1.7x performance uplift compared to the previous gen (BG5). Kioxia boasts that the BG6 Series SSDs also double the max capacity to 2TB, while maintaining the compact M.2 2230 form factor. It will also be making M.2 2280 single-sided form factor versions of the BG6 available.

Kioxia BG6 M.2 2230 SSDs use the PCIe Gen4 x 4 interface and are claimed to deliver data transfers speeds of up to 6.0 GB/s read and 5.3 GB/s write, with I/O performance of up to 900,000 IOPS. The only hardware change flagged by Kioxia — which may well be instrumental to the new faster performance, increased density, and plus improved power efficiency — is the transition to the firm's 6th Generation BiCS Flash 3D NAND chips. These new drives are DRAM-less, but use Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology for caching.

For a better perspective on the new generation Kioxia BG6 M.2 2230 drives, let's compare the specs with the previous gen model and the recently announced Sabrent Rocket Q 2230 devices.

As we mentioned when Sabrent recently launched its Rocket Q devices with 2230 form factor, it is good to have another contender in the market. The availability of the highest capacity 2TB M.2 2230 devices has been poor, but back in Feb. we reported that Framework started using its buying muscle to help secure stock of 2TB M.2 2230 SSDs for Steam Deck upgraders. Framework started sourcing Western Digital SN740 2230 drives, which offer up to 5.15 GB/s transfers and 800,000 IOPS, depending upon capacity.

Kioxia isn't yet talking about pricing for its BG6 M.2 2230 SSDs, but says it will start sampling them with OEMs in H2 this year. If you're currently looking for a new SSD, check out our list of best SSDs.

Kioxia and Western Digital Corp are advancing their merger negotiations and finalizing the agreement specifics, according to a Reuters report citing two informed sources. The two companies are currently ranked as the world's second- and fourth-largest makers of NAND memory, according to TrendForce. So if Western Digital brings Kioxia into the fold, the combined company will become the largest supplier of flash memory.

If the two companies reach an agreement, 43% of the new entity will be owned by Kioxia, 37% will be owned by Western Digital, and the remaining 20% will be owned by existing owners, according to the report. It is noteworthy that Toshiba continues to hold a 40.6% stake in Kioxia, so it would still be a significant shareholder of the new entity.

Although Kioxia and Western Digital jointly produce NAND memory, their business strategies are somewhat different. Kioxia is focused on selling memory, whereas Western Digital is focused on selling NAND-based products, including some of the best SSDs available today. 

Kioxia, which was previously Toshiba Memory, was bought out from Toshiba Corp for $18 billion in 2018 by a consortium led by Bain Capital. In the face of the deteriorating flash-memory market, Kioxia has postponed plans for an initial public offering. Therefore, selling the unit to Western Digital, which co-develops process technologies and co-owns fabs with Kioxia, is a way for investors to get their money back amid a tough market due to falling NAND prices. 

Previous attempts to merge Kioxia and Western Digital in 2021 fell through due to various issues, including differences in valuation. However, news of renewed merger discussions re-surfaced in January. Still, no decision has been made and the details could change, the report stresses.

Kioxia commanded a 19.1% NAND memory market share in Q4 2022, whereas Western Digital had a 16.1% market share, according to TrendForce. Samsung, meanwhile, shipped 33.8% of the NAND memory sold in Q4. Therefore, a company that combines Kioxia's and Western Digital's flash businesses would be the world's largest supplier of NAND, ahead of Samsung and SK hynix.

Some analysts questioned by Reuters also think that Kioxia and Western Digital may be more exposed to fluctuations in the NAND flash market, compared to South Korea-based makers, Samsung and SK hynix.

Kioxia and its research and manufacturing partner Western Digital plan to reveal their innovations that will enable higher-capacity and higher-performance 3D NAND memory devices at the upcoming 2023 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits. Engineers from the two companies are looking to enable 8-plane 3D NAND devices as well as 3D NAND ICs with over 300 word-lines, reports eeNewsEurope.

Eight-Plane 3D NAND: Up to 205 MB/s

As 3D NAND devices increase the number of word-lines, shrink dimensions of NAND cells, and amplify the capacity of memory ICs, it becomes crucial to increase their read/write performance. Actual devices like the best SSDs, laptops, and smartphones tend to use fewer chips for a given capacity, but end users expect their new devices to be faster than their old ones.

One of the ways to improve performance of a 3D NAND IC is to increase the number of planes and enhance its internal parallelism. Kioxia will present a paper (C2-1) covering an eight-plane 1Tb 3D TLC NAND device with over 210 active layers and a 3.2 GT/s interface. The IC closely resembles Kioxia's/Western Digital's 218-layer 1Tb 3D TLC NAND device with a 17Gb/mm^2 density and a 3.2 GT/s I/O bus introduced in late March, but this one features eight planes instead of four and is said to offer 205 MB/s program throughput as well as a read latency of 40  μs. That latter spec is significantly better than the 56 μs offered by Kioxia's 128-layer 3D NAND.

The new paper reveals that Kioxia's 1Tb 3D TLC NAND device achieved its 3.2 GT/s interface speed by reducing the data query area in the X direction to 41%, allowing faster data transfer between memory and host. However, this new design can lead to wiring congestion, which Kioxia mitigated by introducing hybrid row address decoders (X-DEC). X-DECs help manage increased wiring density effectively, minimizing the degradation in read latency that could result from congestion.

Kioxia also implemented a one-pulse-two-strobe technique that allows for two memory cells to be sensed within a single pulse, reducing overall sensing time by 18% and increasing program throughput to 205 MB/s. The device's novel eight-plane architecture, one-pulse-two-strobe method, and 3.2 GT/s I/O allow for a read latency of 40 μs and a program throughput of 205 MB/s.

It's likely that the 1Tb 3D TLC NAND device already implements hybrid row address decoders and the one-pulse-two-strobe technique for its speedy interface, and these technologies will likely be widely used in the future. However, implementing an eight-plane architecture increases the complexity of both the 3D NAND IC and supporting memory controller, leading to higher development and manufacturing costs as well as longer time-to-market. Additionally, if the host controller cannot properly manage an eight-plane device, the actual performance of the IC may decrease.

>300-Layer 3D NAND

Besides investigating eight-plane 3D NAND IC device structures, Kioxia and Western Digital are also collaborating to develop 3D NAND devices with over 300 active word layers, which would enhance vertical channel length and boost the channel's crystalline quality.

To achieve this, the companies plan to employ Metal Induced Lateral Crystallization (MILC) techniques, as stated in the T7-1 paper. By utilizing MILC, developers were able to create single-crystallized 14-micron-long 'macaroni-like' silicon (Si) channels inside vertical memory holes, although for a 112-layer prototype device.

This experimental 3D NAND IC is also reported to leverage a cutting-edge nickel gettering method for eliminating impurities and flaws from the silicon material, thus enhancing cell array performance. As a result, read noise is reduced by a minimum of 40%, and channel conductance is increased tenfold, all without sacrificing cell reliability.

>400-Layer 3D NAND

Currently, techniques like string stacking allow for the construction of 3D NAND with hundreds of active layers, but they are time-intensive. As a result, device manufacturers and wafer fab equipment producers are developing methods to increase the layer count by etching longer (deeper) vertical channels.

Tokyo Electron, an etching tools manufacturer, is set to present a paper (T3-2) detailing a method for rapidly drilling more than 10-micron (10 μm) vertical channels for 400-layer 3D NAND nodes without excessive energy consumption or the use of toxic substances.

According to Tokyo Electron, its High-Aspect-Ratio (HAR) dielectric etching technology employs a cryogenic wafer stage and new gas chemistry to create 10-micron-high channels with an "excellent" etching profile in just 33 minutes and with an 84% reduced carbon footprint.

Average selling prices of NAND memory and solid-state drives have been dropping in the recent quarters due to slow demand and oversupply. But as more applications adopt SSDs, their unit and dollar sales are poised to grow. Five years from now, in 2028, SSD revenues will increase to $67 billion, according to estimates from Yole Group (via StorageNewsletter).

In the long run, the overall market size for SSDs is expected to grow from $29 billion and 352 million units in 2022 to $67 billion and 472 million units in 2028, with a compounded annual growth rate of about 15% between 2022 and 2028, Yole claims.  

Out of 352 million SSDs sold in 2022 (including those that belong to our best SSDs list), about 55 million units were enterprise drives and the rest were client SSDs. The enterprise SSD shipments in 2022 were dominated by PCIe SSDs, which accounted for approximately 55% or 30 million units. It is anticipated that this figure will increase to approximately 71% or 79 million units by 2028. The share of PCIe client SSDs is expected to rise from around 85% in 2021 to around 96% in 2028, representing 252 million units and 347 million units, respectively. 

Enterprise drives will also adopt new PCIe interfaces faster than their client brethren. Yole believes that while 69% of enterprise-grade SSDs will use a PCIe 5.0 bus in 2028, only 12% of client drives will use this interface that year. As for PCIe 6.0 SSDs, they are expected to command 16% of the datacenter drives market in 2028, but their share on the client SSD market will be negligible 3%.

SSD sales dropped by 14% year-over-year to $29 billion in 2022 from $34 billion in 2021; in terms of units, this equaled to around 352 million units, down from over 400 million units in 2021. But this sharp decline was a one-time event, Yole Group believes. Meanwhile, the company does not exactly strive to provide a more or less precise dollar or unit sales outlook for 2023 due to the continued slow depletion of inventory and a weak economy, resulting in substantial oversupply.

Not all SSD suppliers are set to monetize on the market growth equally. Client SSD products will experience weak demand in the coming years (according to Yole), while enterprise SSD growth will be driven by 'low-latency storage needs of advanced workloads' in the datacenter space, according to Yole. The market research firm does not disclose which workloads it means though low-latency solid-state storage applications are crucially needed for trendy applications like generative AI. 

Yole Group notes that there are two types of SSD suppliers: NAND integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) that produce their own memory, develop their own NAND controllers, and produce their own drives as well as third-party SSD manufacturers who buy flash memory (in the form of NAND wafers or chips) from IDMs and controllers from third party to build their drives. Meanwhile, both types of SSD producers tend to buy controllers from companies like Silicon Motion, Phison, and Marvell. Large operators of cloud datacenters often develop their own storage devices, yet they still buy memory and/or controllers from third parties. 

Large IDMs like Samsung, Kioxia, Western Digital, Micron, SK Hynix, and Solidigm controlled an 82% share of the total SSD market in 2022. By contrast, third-party SSD makers like Kingston, Seagate, and Adata only controlled 18%.

NAND researchers at Kioxia have successfully demonstrated a working concept of a new storage architecture called Hepta-level cell NAND flash. This new type of NAND can house up to 7 bits per cell, giving it nearly twice the storage capacity of QLC NAND flash. If Kioxia can stabilize this storage architecture at room temperature, it might become the ultimate successor to spinning hard drives in consumer and enterprise applications.

To create hepta-level NAND flash, Kioxia is using a new design called new silicon process technology to increase cell density, in conjunction with cryogenic cooling. New silicon process technology replaces current poly-silicon materials with a single-crystal silicon that is used in a channel inside a memory cell transistor. This apparently reduces the amount of read noise coming from the NAND flash by up to two-thirds. In other words, new silicon process technology produces clearer read signals for reading data off of the NAND flash, enough so to increase the bits cell capacity to 7.

Kioxia says this new storage architecture will also be significantly cheaper to produce, and even has a proposed solution incorporating hepta-level flash with cryogenic cooling. That would be cheaper than current (air-cooled or passively cooled) SSDs on the market today.

If Kioxia starts producing hepta-level NAND flash in the near future, it will likely change the SSD landscape forever. Ultra-high capacity SSDs will finally be possible, and SSDs will finally have the capacity to match most hard drives on the market today.

For perspective, the highest density NAND flash on sale today is QLC, with 4 bits per cell,  used by drives like the Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SATA SSD, and the Sabrent Rocket 8TB NVMe SSD. With hepta-level flash, we could see drives almost as big as 16TB hitting consumer shelves (without other advancements, like more layers, which are also happening). The same could also apply to enterprise SSDs, with capacities that could match mainstream SAS hard drives.

But, speed and bandwidth (not to mention endurance) could be a potential issue with these future SSDs. We've seen this play out with QLC drives, where read and write speeds take a big hit compared to SLC, MLC, and TLC equivalents. If history repeats itself, this problem would likely become even worse with this new 7-layer hepta-level flash. Although for some instances where hard drives speeds have more or less been sufficient, that could be less of an issue. 

We'll have to see how things play out, and what sort of solutions SSD manufacturers have in mind for circumventing these issues. In either case, hepta-level flash will at least need to have the same level of performance as hard drives to be competitive.

Kioxia and Western Digital have revealed their jointly developed 8th Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory device featuring 218 active layers. The new IC boasts a record-breaking 3200 MT/s interface speed that will allow developers to build high-performance storage subsystems (such as the industry's fastest client SSDs) using fewer 3D NAND chips. To enable a 3200 MT/s I/O, the two companies took a page from YMTC's Xtacking book. 

The first 8th Generation BiCS 3D TLC NAND device introduced this week features a 1Tb (128GB) capacity, a four-plane architecture to maximize internal parallelism and performance, and a 3200 MT/s interface speed (which will provide a peak sequential read/write speed of 400 MB/s). Kioxia and Western Digital are the first 3D NAND makers in the world to unveil a flash memory IC with a 3200 MT/s I/O, leapfrogging competitors by 33%. 

But while building the world's fastest 3D NAND memory device is an achievement by itself, it is interesting how the two companies achieved this. Kioxia's and Western Digital's 8th Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory features an innovative architecture called CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array), which resembles YMTC's recognized Xtacking.  

Normally, 3D NAND cells array resides next to or on top of its peripheral circuits like page buffers, sense amplifiers, charge pumps, and I/O. Meanwhile, from semiconductor manufacturing perspective, it is not exactly efficient to make memory and peripheral logic using the same fabrication technology. The CBA and Xtacking architectures involve production of 3D NAND cell array and I/O CMOS on separate wafers using optimal production nodes, something that allows it to maximize bit density of the memory array and I/O performance. 

In addition to the industry's fastest I/O, Kioxia and Western Digital claim that their latest 3D NAND IC also boasts the industry's highest bit density, though without elaborating what bit density we are looking at. Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that the introduced 8th Generation BiCS 3D TLC NAND can work in both 3D TLC and 3D QLC modes and therefore can potentially address both high-performance/high-capacity premium client and enterprise SSDs as well as inexpensive yet fast drives for client PCs or high-density datacenter-grade storage applications. 

Kioxia stated that it had commenced sampling its 8th Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory devices with a few chosen customers. However, the company has not provided any information regarding the timeline for the start of high-volume production of its latest flash memory. Since it takes a long time for makers of flash memory and SSD controllers to mate the former to the latter, NAND producers usually reveal new types of memory well before  mass production start. That said, expect 8th Gen BiCS 3D NAND on the market sometime in 2024, although we are speculating here. 

"Through our unique engineering partnership, we have successfully launched the eighth-generation BiCS Flash with the industry's highest bit density," said Masaki Momodomi, Chief Technology Officer at Kioxia Corporation. "I am pleased that Kioxia's sample shipments for limited customers have started. By applying CBA technology and scaling innovations, we've advanced our portfolio of 3D flash memory technologies for use in various data-centric applications, including smartphones, IoT devices, and data centers."

Demand for 3D NAND memory dropped in the third quarter due to softening demand for PCs and smartphones. As a result, both average selling prices (ASPs) of flash memory and its bit shipments collapsed, which severely affected the revenue of 3D NAND makers.

Makers of 3D NAND supplied $13.71 billion worth of memory in Q3 2022, a drop of 24.3% quarter-over-quarter, according to a report by TrendForce. This is because volumes that 3D NAND bit shipments declined by 6.7% sequentially, whereas average prices fell by 18.3% QoQ as 3D NAND makers had to reduce prices to make their products more appealing.

Samsung retained its leadership position as the No.1 maker of NAND flash during the quarter, with a 31.4% market share. Meanwhile, its 3D NAND revenue decreased by 28.1% sequentially. Samsung, which sells some of the best SSDs around, suffered from both bit shipments and ASP declines in the third quarter of 2022.

By contrast, Kioxia managed to increase its market share from 15.6% in Q2 to 20.6% in Q3. Furthermore, the company's 3D NAND revenue totaled $2.83 billion, a decrease of only 0.1% quarter over quarter, based on data from TrendForce. While Kioxia's ASPs declined significantly during the quarter, the company sold boatloads of memory for consumer applications.

SK Group's NAND flash memory sales — which controls SK Hynix and Solidigm — declined by 29.8% quarter-over-quarter to $2.54 billion. As a result, the company's share dropped 18.5% from 19.9% in the second quarter. In addition, SK Group's position weakened significantly in Q3 because sales of memory and solid-state drives for consumer products (sold primarily by SK Hynix) and shipments of enterprise-grade SSDs (sold primarily by Solidigm) slipped.

Western Digital and Micron performed similarly in the third quarter as their sales declined 28.3% and 26.2% quarter-over-quarter, respectively, and both companies lost some share to Kioxia in Q3 2022.

Smaller makers of 3D NAND suffered the most in the third quarter as their sales collapsed by 37.1% QoQ. As a result, they now control 4.6% of the market, down 1% from Q2 2022.

TrendForce expects 3D NAND revenue to lower in the fourth quarter as demand continues to remain soft, and cuts of 3D NAND wafer starts are not forecasted to bring immediate relief. As a result, analysts expect contract 3D NAND prices to decline by 20% – 25% QoQ due to slow demand. Furthermore, Samsung's plans concerning 3D NAND output in Q4 and onwards are unclear as, unlike its rivals, it has not announced any cuts.

When Japan and the U.S. announced joint development of a 2nm fabrication technology earlier this year, we were skeptical. But as it turns out, the Japanese government is very serious about the project, and it plans to allocate some ¥350 billion (nearly $2.38 billion) to build the joint research hub with the U.S. 

The research hub will be comprised of Japanese and American semiconductor companies that are yet to be named, as well as multiple universities from Japan, the U.S. and Europe, reports Nikkei. Among the Japanese universities, the business publication names the University of Tokyo, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Riken. IBM is also said to be among the candidates to participate. 

The hub will conduct fundamental research to explore materials needed to make chips using a 2nm-class fabrication technology by the latter half of the decade. But it's is unclear whether Japan has plans to build actual fabs that will make commercial chips. And if such plans exist it is unclear which of the Japanese companies have enough money and scale to make chips on a leading-edge node.  

It has been quite a while when Japanese companies were leaders of the microelectronics market. Today, only Kioxia produces leading-edge memory in Japan. Other Japanese chip developers either use trailing nodes to make their products domestically, or outsource their production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).  

But the Japanese government wants to revive the country's semiconductor industry, which is why it approved subsidies for Kioxia and Western Digital, Micron, and TSMC to build new fabs in the country.  

In addition to spending ¥350 billion ($2.38 billion) on the new research hub, the Japanese government also intends to spend ¥450 billion ($3.071 billion) on advanced production hubs, as well as ¥370 billion ($2.525 billion) on securing materials required for manufacturing, which emphasizes how serious the authorities in Japan are about the chip industry.

It gets tough for newcomers to capture a sizeable share of the solid-state drive market away from well-known brands, which is why Kingston and Adata have led retail SSD shipments for years. But apparently, Gigabyte became one of the Top 10 retail SSD suppliers after only a few years on the market.

SSD shipments through global distribution channels reached 127 million units in 2021, up 11% year-over-year, despite shortages of controllers and power management ICs, according to TrendForce. 42% of these shipped drives were from companies that make their 3D NAND memory (Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Western Digital). In contrast, the remaining 58% encompasses companies focused purely on SSD assembly. TrendForce's retail SSD rankings only count the latter category of 'pure play' SSD producers.

In retail, brand strength matters, which is why Kingston, Adata, Kimtigo, Lexar, and Transcend have been in TrendForce's list of Top 10 makers of SSDs sold in retail or inside custom-built PCs for ages. But Kingston's share dropped a bit in 2021 to 26%, probably because there were just many players addressing segments that Kingston has addressed. On the other hand, other top 3 makers strengthened their positions, according to TrendForce. Lexar, which currently has nothing to do with Micron, sits at No. 4 with a 6% share. Netac sits just a little below Lexar.

Meanwhile, after only a few years in the game and multiple drives that ended in our best SSDs list, Gigabyte found itself in the No. 9 place with a 3% market share. Colorful, just like Kimtigo, is primarily oriented on China and is even higher with a 4% share. Finally, Powev is another new Top 10 entrant with a 4% share.

Hundreds of companies supply solid-state drives today as SSDs are relatively easy to produce, and the market is growing. But because there are so many names around, the competition is cut-throat as everyone is trying to offer the best price, highest quality, and highest performance. For obvious reasons, companies that produce their 3D NAND memory have an advantage over pure-play SSD houses as they have their chips and know how they behave. They know how to ensure consistently high performance of drives that use their memory.

But while it is hard to compete against makers of 3D NAND in terms of price, some specialists successfully produce high-speed drives. Companies like Corsair, G.Skill, Patriot, Sabrent, and TeamGroup may not be in the Top 10 list of the largest retail SSD makers by unit shipments. However, they still serve their loyal customer base that demands two things only: performance and quality.

While makers of memory are cutting down their 3D NAND output, the surplus of memory chips and solid-state drives is so significant that their prices will continue to fall for months to come, according to analysts rom Trendfocus via StorageNewletter. In fact, prices of SSDs may drop by two times by mid-2023. 

Slowing demand for PCs by consumers as well as some businesses naturally means lower demand for all kinds of computer components, including processors and graphics cards. But commodities like 3D NAND, memory modules, and solid-state drives suffer from dropping demand more than other categories.  The key reasons being that they are relatively easy to produce, there are many competitors on the market, and finished goods usually sit in their inventory before getting acquired by PC makers, component producers, or resellers. 

In the recent weeks Kioxia said it would reduce production of 3D NAND wafers by 40% starting October 1, whereas Micron said it would slowdown its 232-layer 3D NAND to limit 3D NAND bit supply. It is noteworthy that Micron's 232-layer 3D NAND is meant to enable some of those best SSDs with sequential read/write performance that exceeds 10 GB/s. But such actions are not going to come into effect immediately, analysts from Trendfocus believe as both companies have plenty of 3D NAND in stock, whereas SSD makers have loads of drives in their inventory that they need to sell. 

Nowadays one can get a Crucial P3 500GB M.2-2280 drive for $44 at Amazon, which is 8.8 cents per gigabyte. There are even cheaper 2.5-inch PNY CS900 500GB SATA drives that retail for $31, or 6.2 cents per gigabyte. While retail 3D NAND per-bit prices are already low, Trendfocus anticipates flash memory makers to offer nearly 40% to 50% per-bit price declines by mid-2023, which will further reduce costs of SSDs as well as their retail prices.

At present it is hard to estimate how many SSDs are sitting in inventory of dozens of manufacturers, but Trendfocus assumes that it is going to take at least two quarters for cloud companies and PC makers to digest already produced 3D NAND and drives, so expect SSD prices to continue their declines for at least two quarters. 

How cheap those SSDs will get is hard to tell at this point, but mainstream drives with a PCIe 3.0 x4 or PCIe 4.0 x4 interface will definitely get cheaper over the next few quarters. Suppliers of premium 3D NAND memory and SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface will try to offset their declining revenue with their top-of-the-range drives aimed at enthusiasts, so do not expect those shiny new PCIe Gen5 SSDs to get cheap any time soon. Yet, mainstream SSDs used for bulk storage could get cheap enough to replace some of low-capacity hard drives, it seems.

A preliminary meeting of the U.S.-led Chip 4 group, attended by representatives from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S. took place last week after a year of preparation. The participants agreed that such an alliance was required to build a resilient chip supply chain. Meanwhile, Taiwan Deputy Economy Minister told reporters that the country would use the group to protect interests of its local semiconductor industry. Taiwan also plans to ensure that chips made in Taiwan would not be used by China to boost its military capabilities. 

The so-called Chip 4 alliance comprising the USA, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is meant to secure the global semiconductor supply chain, synchronize policies, grants, and joint research and development (R&D) projects. Companies from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan closely collaborate with companies and universities from the U.S. Japan also supplies critical raw materials to countries in the region. 

Beyond this, however, chipmakers from Asia rarely cooperate between themselves, as companies such as Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, and UMC compete against each other pretty fiercely and naturally do not want to share any trade secrets. 

In a bid to develop next-generation semiconductor technologies, foster cooperation, build a resilient chip supply chain, and better compete against growing Chinese semiconductor prowess, the three Asian countries and their U.S. allies have to somehow work together despite various controversies. 

"A semiconductor industry is a globally collaborated industry," said Chen Chern-chyi, deputy Economic Affairs minister of Taiwan, reports Nikkei. "The manufacturing equipment comes primarily from the U.S. and Europe, the raw materials come from Japan, and manufacturing technology from Taiwan and [South] Korea. […] So, this requires collaboration to form a very resilient supply chain." 

While Taiwan wants to ensure that it gets a steady supply of raw materials from Japan, it does not necessarily want to rebuild Japan's semiconductor industry and enable the country to produce chips using leading-edge process technologies on its own soil. 

"We will use that [Chip 4] platform to strive to safeguard our companies' interest," said the deputy minister, reports Reuters. 

Yet there are perhaps more pressing issues for Taiwan and South Korea. China is the largest trading partner for both countries and Chinese chip designers are very important customers for TSMC and Samsung Foundry. While boosting China's military capabilities is clearly not in Taiwanese interests, TSMC used to produce chips for Chinese entities like Phytium that had ties with China's government and military. 

The deputy minister told the reporters that his country would ensure that China no longer has access to state-of-the-art chips even by using third parties to develop advanced processors for companies such as Phytium. 

"With respect to national security, we will take measures including safeguarding our trade secrets, our key national key technologies, safeguarding our talent and not to be poached illegally," said Chen, reports Bloomberg. "Once we find a loophole, we plug it."

Kioxia said it would cut down production of 3D NAND memory at its fabs located at its Yokkaichi and Kitakami sites. Demand for PCs and many other devices is slowing due to high inflation rates, geopolitical tensions, and macroeconomic factors, producers of commodities like 3D NAND want to reduce inventories and avoid oversupply, so they have to cut down production. 

Kioxia said it would reduce its wafer starts by approximately 30%, starting from tomorrow. However, a 30% reduction of wafer starts does not automatically mean a 30% reduction of 3D NAND bit output, as depending on the exact process technologies used to process wafers, the effect on bit output can be quite different. In addition, Kioxia did not say how long it plans to cut its 3D NAND wafer production.  

Kioxia operates its fabs and shares its output with Western Digital, and while the American company has not issued any similar statements as of the time of writing, we would expect it to follow suit. 

Kioxia is not the first to slash 3D NAND output, yet it is the first company to put the cards on the table and make a more or less detailed announcement. Micron said on Thursday that it was ‘reducing utilization in select areas in both DRAM and NAND,’ which essentially means a production cut. Meanwhile, there is no word (again) about NAND bit output, but only about the utilization of fabs, which reduces bit output per se. Perhaps nobody outside of Micron knows exactly what output was cut, so it is not our business to make such assumptions.

Also, Micron said it would slow down the production ramp of its latest 232-layer 3D NAND memory devices to reduce costs associated with the ramp and avoid oversupply on the market, which will inevitably affect the prices of flash memory and storage devices like solid state drives (SSDs), including the best SSDs aimed at enthusiasts.”

In fact, earlier this week, analysts from TrendForce said that the price of 3D TLC NAND and 3D QLC NAND wafers dropped by 30% ~ 35% in the third quarter compared to the second quarter and would decline by another 20% ~ 25% in Q4 compared to Q3 because of slowing demand for new PCs, servers, and consumer electronics.  

Given such drastic 3D NAND price reductions, it is not surprising that Kioxia is cutting down its output to reduce its inventory levels. It is unclear how other 3D NAND makers will react, but in the end, they have two options: keep production of flash memory at the current levels and grab market share from Kioxia by offering lower prices and potentially lose money, or reduce the output to keep supply and demand in balance to at least fix prices at current levels. 

The Kioxia XG8 arrives as the true successor to the popular XG6 client drive, offering PCIe 4.0 levels of performance with high-capacity options. For OEM use, the XG8 supports optional features such as TCG Opal 2.01 for encryption and also power loss notification. Its conservative design allows for use in laptops, desktops, gaming PCs and more. This drive may not be officially available in retail, but it is a suitable choice in a new machine and should be compared to other high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

The XG8 comes with new hardware - that is, a new controller and new flash - and promises better performance. Kioxia shows random and sequential performance improvements of between 169 and 253% in terms of IOPS and MBps, respectively. Other features make it useful for client environments which could include workstations, as well. It will be interesting to see how it holds up against the best SSDs. 

Specifications

The Kioxia XG8 is available in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB sizes. It is particularly nice to see a 4TB option as TLC drives still often tap out at 2TB. The flash may help here as BiCS5 is known to be available in 1Tb dies, as on the 8TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. However, the 4TB model is double-sided with more NAND packages, so this is not absolutely necessary. The XG8 can hit up to 7.0/5.8 GBps for sequential read and write and 900K/620K random read and write IOPS. Kioxia backs the drive with a 5-year warranty without any official TBW rating (as this is an OEM product). The KG8 is also NVMe 1.4 compliant.

The XG8 has an option with TCG Opal 2.01 support for each capacity which enables the Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) capability. This may be useful for client drive environments. The XG8 also supports power loss notification (PLN) through a PCIe sideband signal. This allows the drive to flush its data to non-volatile media before power loss through host initialization. This is not the same as power loss protection (PLP), which uses a battery or capacitor to protect data-in-flight. However, theoretically, PLN could be used with off-module PLP (OMP) to add this functionality.

Software and Accessories

The XG8 does not offer much in the way of software or accessories, which isn't uncommon for client SSDs. We recommend Macrium Reflect Free if you need to clone or image your existing drive. Other applications, such as CrystalDiskInfo, can offer more information about the drive and its health status.

A Closer Look

The XG8 is covered by a single, bright label with minimal information. Underneath this we see the controller flanked by two NAND packages on one side and a DRAM package on the other. The drive is single-sided, which is nice for some applications. It is worth noting that this drive is double-sided at 4TB. 

Kioxia claims that this is a proprietary controller, which makes sense as it follows in the footsteps of the XG5 and XG6. This is an eight-channel controller capable of getting the most out of a PCIe 4.0 interface. Kioxia’s Exceria line has used variations of Phison’s E12 controller instead.

The DRAM is Nanya’s NT6AN512T32AV-J2. This is LPDDR4, a low power form of DRAM, in a 512MB x 32b configuration. This makes it effectively 16Gb or 2GB which is a good amount for a 2TB drive.

These are 8Tb or 1TB packages consisting of 112-layer BiCS5 TLC dies. This flash can also be found on the 1TB Kioxia BG5, which has a single package. There’s not too much to say about this flash. Even though it has a generational disadvantage versus Micron’s 176-layer TLC, it has proven to be quite good in drives like the WD SN770. The maturity of the architecture has its benefits in OEM products, too.

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Comparison Products

It will be interesting to see how the Kioxia XG8 stands up to the most popular high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Proprietary designs include the Samsung 980 Pro, the Crucial P5 Plus, the SK hynix Platinum P41, and the WD Black SN850X. InnoGrit’s IG5236 controller is represented by the Acer Predator GM7000 while Phison’s E18 controller is demonstrated by the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and Kingston KC3000. These last three drives are utilizing Micron’s 176-layer TLC rather than 96-layer, and there are some minor differences between the last two SSDs.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files and recording gameplay video streams.  

The XG8 performs in the bottom half of the pack, closest to the GM7000. We saw the best results with the SN850X and Platinum P41. 

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The XG8 does better in PCMark 10, coming in third after the two best drives we’ve tested: the Platinum P41 and SN850X. It is nice to see this level of performance out of a client drive.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

Although the XG8 finishes last in this test, it’s not as bad as it sounds. All the drives being tested are high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs that push the limits of the interface. Shorter writes and copies will fit in pSLC. Therefore, the XG8 is not really that far off from the top drives.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO & CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. These tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

In ATTO, the XG8 is mediocre at best and noticeably slouches at lower I/O sizes with sequential reads. This could be down to controller optimization or the mixture of this controller and flash. Other products, like the GM7000 and 980 Pro, also have noticeable dips. Of course, we anticipate higher queue depths for random reads once the DirectStorage API is realized.

CDM sequential results have the XG8 around the middle of the pack, although performance is more than sufficient for a drive of this type. Random performance, which is often more important, is not quite as good. It’s easy to be disappointed here, although client drives are often designed more for sustained performance. Reliability is a key factor in that design.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

What should you expect from a client drive with regards to pSLC? OEM designs tend to be conservative, as with many of WD’s drives in the Blue NVMe series such as the SN570, which has its origins way back in the CL SN520. Consistency of performance is nice, particularly if the drive is fuller. This usually means a smaller pSLC cache.

The XG8 writes at around 6GBps for 26 seconds, indicating a cache of about 160GB, which is a bit small for a 2TB drive. It maintains a respectable 1.75GBps in TLC mode after this. Overall writes are therefore close to the 980 Pro and Crucial P5 Plus. This design and level of performance is more than adequate for the drive’s expected use. The cache can be recovered during long idle periods as needed, particularly for random writes to improve drive endurance, but TLC performance is good enough.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The XG8 is not particularly efficient in this test when compared to other high-end drives of its caliber. In some respects it does share design characteristics with the Crucial P5 Plus, and these two drives are at the bottom. Average and max power consumption are good, which might be important factors in a client environment; Kioxia rates the 2TB XG8 for about 7.7W. Idle consumption is difficult to gauge as a properly configured system, specifically a laptop, will have NVMe drives idling at very low power usage in practice. Kioxia states that the XG8 only pulls about 3mW in L1.2. Larger file transfers, as tested here, occur rapidly and may not be as impactful as they appear.

The XG8 idled at 49 degrees Celsius by SMART and 54 C by IR gun, with a reasonable ambient temperature. Sustained writes got the drive up to about 80C, where the drive began to throttle. Performance wavered from between 800 and 1,000 MBps at this point. As an OEM drive, environmental factors must be carefully controlled in order to ensure device reliability and lifespan. Kioxia does rate this for up to 85 C in operation as a composite maximum, so the difference allows for some headroom. We would recommend a heatsink if your system allows.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Kioxia XG8 is an able PCIe 4.0 SSD that does not really stand out in any way. Its optional features and overall design do make it a good client or OEM drive, which makes sense. Being available up to 4TB is a nice upgrade over its predecessor, considering it delivers that without relying on QLC. The drive’s cache is conservative and it did get a little hot in operation, but this makes sense considering the design goals. If you manage to get this drive you might consider adding a heatsink, however.

The XG8 is not intended for retail and will not appear in that segment for the U.S., but that rarely stops users from getting drives from secondary markets. An example would be 2230 drives for Steam Deck SSD upgrades. Such drives may sometimes appear in retail in other regions. Primarily, though, this is for pre-built machines and those bought in bulk for offices. Those SSDs must be standards compliant and are designed for reliability in a variety of environments. That doesn’t make the XG8 a bad drive by any means, even when compared to high-end retail options.

You may purchase an OEM gaming PC with this drive and it’s useful to know how this drive fares against retail options, in the interest of an upgrade or otherwise. Within that context, this drive is probably good enough for you to wait a while. PCIe 5.0 drives are on the horizon but they will be limited for a while, due to insufficiently fast flash among other things. If the XG8 is one of a few limited options for you where you are, it’s also nice to know it gets the job done even if it’s not the very fastest. This is not an obsolete device by any means.

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