Kioxia has unveiled the world’s highest-capacity solid-state drive (SSD), a 245TB NVMe SSD leveraging PCIe 5.0 speeds, built with the company’s 8th-generation BiCS FLASH technology for hyperscale data centers and generative AI workloads.
The new SSD is a flagship product within Kioxia’s LC9 series of enterprise SSDs, achieving its immense capacity by intricately stacking 32 2Tb QLC 3D flash memory dies, resulting in an industry-leading density. It incorporates a proprietary NVMe 2.0 controller and supports a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface with dual-port connectivity.
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), suitable for typical hyperscale workloads.
Kioxia’s advanced memory architecture and innovative CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology enabled the development of this ultra-high-capacity SSD. CBA technology allows a record 8TB of storage to be packed into each compact 154-ball BGA NAND package.
The 245TB SSD is designed to address the critical needs of modern data centers, particularly those engaged in generative AI, demanding exceptional performance, high power efficiency, and robust security. Kioxia posits that this drive will empower data centers to optimize their IT infrastructure, reducing overall power consumption and total operating costs.
The drive is particularly suited for AI development firms requiring vast datasets to train large language models and support the creation of vector databases integral to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). The LC9 series, including the 245TB variant, features advanced security features such as Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE), Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) capabilities, FIPS certification, and compliance with NVMe 2.0 and NVMe-MI 1.2c standards.
The existing LC9 series from Kioxia includes high-capacity drives up to 122.88TB, available in 2.5-inch and E3.S form factors. All models within the LC9 series support the Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications, demonstrating their compatibility with open hardware designs for data centers.
