Kioxia unveils an insane new SSD that could feed GPUs millions of IOPS and break AI memory limits | Tech Radar

Overview

Did Kioxia just unveil the fastest SSD ever? GP series uses Storage Class Memory to feed the HBM GPU with millions of IOPS

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Details

Kioxia GP Series SSD provides GPUs with faster memory access beyond HBM limits

Storage Class Memory bridges the performance gap between DRAM and conventional NAND flash storage

XL-FLASH prioritizes low latency and millions of random IOPS over sequential speed

Kioxia has introduced a new type of solid-state drive designed to function as a direct memory expansion for GPUs.

The new Kioxia GP Series, announced at Nvidia GTC 2026, is not a replacement for existing storage, but rather an additional tier in the memory hierarchy.

Its primary role is to provide a larger pool of fast-accessible data for GPUs, effectively acting as an overflow for the expensive and capacity-limited High Bandwidth Memory.

Guess where all the NAND flash components are going? The 8th (yes, eighth) 245TB SSD has been announced amidst race to quench AI storage thirst of hyperscalers

This is the first PCIe 6.0 SSD you can actually buy and by 'you' I mean hyperscalers — Micron 9650 can reach 28GBps read speeds and will only be used for AI inference

Samsung and Sandisk are set to integrate rival HBF technology into AI products from Nvidia, AMD, and Google within 24 months, and that's a huge deal

The drive leverages Storage Class Memory (SCM), a category of technology that sits in the performance gap between traditional NAND flash and system DRAM.

This concept was popularized years ago by Intel’s now-discontinued Optane technology, which aimed to bridge the same divide, but failed.

Kioxia’s version, branded as XL-FLASH, prioritizes low latency and high input/output operations per second over raw sequential throughput, allowing finer-grained data access at just 512bytes.

This development is a direct response to a fundamental problem in current AI infrastructure, GPU memory is simply not big enough for the models it is asked to run.

As AI models scale toward trillions of parameters and context windows expand to millions of tokens, the demand for memory to store items like the KV cache has outpaced the physical limits of HBM.

Nvidia’s Storage-Next initiative, which this SSD supports, was created to address this exact bottleneck by encouraging storage vendors to build drives that GPUs can link to directly.

“Kioxia fully supports the NVIDIA Storage-Next initiative and will deliver purpose-built SSDs to effectively address the need for GPU-accessible memory,” said Makoto Hamada, Senior Director of the SSD Division, Kioxia Corporation.

Micron announces a QLC SSD just weeks after killing its beloved Crucial brand — the 3610 is a basic Gen 5 SSD that's somehow faster than Gen 4 TLC

‘In AI models, the real bottleneck isn’t computing power — it’s memory’: Phison CEO on 244TB SSDs, PLC NAND, why high-bandwidth flash isn’t a good idea, and why CSP profit goes hand in hand with storage capacity

Chinese storage startup uses ancient, controversial technique to deliver 'extraordinarily fast and resilient' SSD: this weirdly-named Roealsen 6 unlocks hardware compression to deliver incredible PCIe SSD speeds

While the GP Series aims for millions of IOPS to feed data to GPUs, the broader industry is chasing even more ambitious performance targets.

The concept of reaching 100 million IOPS is a known industry pipedream, one that may require inventing entirely new classes of memory.

Other companies are also targeting the niche market that Optane left behind.

For example, the Inno Grit N3X SSD uses Kioxia’s XL-Flash in SLC mode to deliver extreme endurance.

This drive can reportedly withstand up to 50 full drive writes per day for five consecutive years.

Kioxia itself has previously signaled its intent to push toward even higher performance figures.

The company is aiming for 10 million IOPS using SLC NAND, which suggests that the GP Series is just one step in a longer race to eliminate storage latency for processors.

It remains to be seen whether the Kioxia GP Series SSD will succeed where previous SCM attempts stumbled.

Follow Tech Radar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow Tech Radar on Tik Tok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on Whats App too.

Efosa has been writing about technology for over 7 years, initially driven by curiosity but now fueled by a strong passion for the field. He holds both a Master's and a Ph D in sciences, which provided him with a solid foundation in analytical thinking.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

1 Did Kioxia just unveil the fastest SSD ever? GP series uses Storage Class Memory to feed the HBM GPU with millions of IOPS

2 System 76 is charging an eye-popping $5299 for an Nvidia Ge Force RTX 5090 GPU upgrade on its latest PC: Video card dwarves RAM cost in latest Thelio Mira Linux computer

31979 was the year Apple dreamed of multi-colored Macs, but it had to wait nearly 20 years before the release of the iconic i Mac G3

444 bathroom trips later: My unfiltered thoughts on the P Water app

Tech Radar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Key Takeaways

• Did Kioxia just unveil the fastest SSD ever

• When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission

• Kioxia GP Series SSD provides GPUs with faster memory access beyond HBM limits

• Storage Class Memory bridges the performance gap between DRAM and conventional NAND flash storage

• XL-FLASH prioritizes low latency and millions of random IOPS over sequential speed