Kioxia, a prominent flash memory manufacturer, has unveiled the world’s highest-capacity solid-state drive (SSD), a 245TB NVMe SSD leveraging PCIe 5.0 speeds. This groundbreaking device, built with the company’s 8th-generation BiCS FLASH technology, is specifically engineered to meet the demanding requirements of hyperscale data centers and generative AI workloads.
The new SSD is a flagship product within Kioxia’s LC9 series of enterprise SSDs. It achieves its immense capacity of 245.76TB by intricately stacking 32 2Tb QLC 3D flash memory dies, resulting in an industry-leading density. The drive incorporates a proprietary NVMe 2.0 controller and supports a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface with dual-port connectivity, ensuring high-speed data transfer and robust performance.
In terms of performance metrics, Kioxia asserts that the 245TB SSD can achieve sequential read speeds of up to 12,000 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 3,000 MB/s. Its random performance is equally impressive, with a claimed 1.3 million IOPS for reads and 50,000 IOPS for writes. The drive’s endurance is rated at 0.3 Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD), which is suitable for typical hyperscale workloads, indicating its capability to sustain significant data writes over its lifespan.
The development of this ultra-high-capacity SSD is attributed to Kioxia’s advanced memory architecture and its innovative CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology. This CBA technology is pivotal in allowing a record 8TB of storage to be packed into each compact 154-ball BGA NAND package. Kioxia emphasizes that this achievement is a direct result of its expertise in high-precision wafer processing, meticulous material design, and sophisticated wire bonding technologies.
The 245TB SSD is strategically designed to address the critical needs of modern data centers, particularly those engaged in generative AI. These applications demand exceptional performance, high power efficiency, and robust security. Kioxia posits that this drive will empower data centers to optimize their IT infrastructure by reducing overall power consumption, minimizing the number of drive slots required, and enabling more efficient cooling, ultimately leading to lower total operating costs.
Its suitability for AI development firms is particularly highlighted, as these entities require vast datasets to train large language models. Furthermore, the drive can support the creation of vector databases, which are integral to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)—a method that enhances the accuracy and reliability of AI inference. These diverse AI workloads inherently necessitate large volumes of fast and efficient storage, a need that the 245TB SSD is designed to fulfill.
The existing LC9 series from Kioxia already includes high-capacity drives up to 122.88TB, available in 2.5-inch and E3.S form factors. All models within the LC9 series, including the newly introduced 245TB variant, are equipped with advanced security features. These include Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE), Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) capabilities, FIPS certification, and compliance with NVMe 2.0 and NVMe-MI 1.2c standards. Additionally, they support the Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications, demonstrating their compatibility with open hardware designs for data centers.
