KIOXIA announces a brand-new type of SSD, and it's a game-changer for AI

At NVIDIA GTC 2026 this week, the annual all-things-AI event, KIOXIA announced it is developing a Super High IOPS SSD, which it described as a "new type of SSD" built for AI systems of today and the future. What makes it new is that it allows the GPU to access the SSD's high-speed flash memory as an extension of existing High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) in AI systems.

2

Essentially, with KIOXIA's new Super High IOPS SSD, AI systems will be able to dramatically increase the available memory capacity with the help of high-speed SSDs. Part of the KIOXIA GP Series, the company confirms that development is underway and that evaluation samples will be sent out to select customers by the end of the year.

DRAM capacity, or memory size, is one of the limiting factors and the highest costs in scaling large AI systems. And with that, this new SSD is KIOXIA's contribution to the NVIDIA Storage-Next initiative, which is about addressing this shift by incorporating additional solutions for data-intensive AI workloads constrained by DRAM capacity or HBM availability.

"Expanding the GPU's usable memory space allows access to larger data sets and improves GPU utilization by moving more data closer to compute resources," KIOXIA explains in its announcement.

This new Super High IOPS SSD is optimized for GPU-driven AI workloads, with the company confirming it will use low-latency KIOXIA XL-FLASH Storage Class Memory to deliver higher IOPS, finer-grained 512-byte data access, and lower power consumption than its conventional TLC SSDs.

"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 at KIOXIA. "This collaboration is instrumental in shaping the future of AI storage architecture."

In addition to the KIOXIA GP Series SSD family addressing the HBM issue, KIOXIA is also keenly aware that AI models scaling to trillions of parameters are straining cache growth. And with that, NVIDIA's Context Memory Storage (CMX), another technology designed to extend memory beyond the GPU, will be supported by the new KIOXIA CM9 Series PCIe 5.0 E3.S SSD with 25.6 TB of TLC capacity and 3 DWPD endurance.

KIOXIA believes this type of SSD will also play a critical role in efficiency and cost-effectively scaling AI and notes that samples will begin shipping in Q3 2026.