Japanese memory maker Kioxia has unveiled an upgraded GP-series SSD capable of more than 20 million random-read operations per second, doubling the performance of its previous generation.
According to Blocks & Files the new drive uses third-generation XL-FLASH technology and will be demonstrated at the Open Compute Project Global Summit in San Jose, California, from 12 to 16 October. Its performance represents a substantial improvement on the GP1, announced in August, which delivered approximately 10 million IOPS.
The headline figure applies to random reads involving 512-byte blocks, a considerably smaller data size than the 4KB operations commonly used in conventional SSD benchmarks. Kioxia targets workloads that require enormous numbers of small data accesses, where traditional flash storage can struggle to keep pace.
Third-generation XL-FLASH brings architectural improvements designed to reduce latency and increase parallelism. Shorter word lines and bit lines reduce electrical delays, while additional planes within each memory die allow more operations to be processed simultaneously.
Kioxia claims the technology triples read performance and improves write performance by about 150 per cent over the previous XL-FLASH generation. Energy efficiency is expected to improve by around 40 per cent for reads and 80 per cent for writes, although actual power consumption will depend on operating conditions.
The GP-series architecture is intended to support Nvidia’s Storage-Next initiative, which seeks to give graphics processors faster access to flash-based storage. The idea is to supplement expensive high-bandwidth memory with a larger, cheaper storage tier, although flash remains considerably slower than conventional GPU memory.
Kioxia has a roadmap targeting 100 million IOPS using future GP-series technology. Achieving that figure will require further improvements to flash memory, controllers and interconnect bandwidth, potentially involving PCIe 7.0.
Alongside this speed demonstration, Kioxia is introducing the LD4 series of enterprise SSDs for hyperscale datacentres. The drives use the elongated E1.L form factor and eighth-generation BiCS FLASH, featuring 218-layer QLC NAND capable of storing four bits per cell.
The LD4 range initially offers 15.36TB and 30.72TB capacities, with an architecture designed to scale to 122.88TB. It uses a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and supports NVMe 2.0, the Open Compute Project Datacenter NVMe SSD Specification 2.6 and end-to-end data protection.
Kioxia has not yet revealed performance or endurance figures for the LD4, although its use of QLC NAND suggests capacity and storage density are the priorities. The lengthy E1.L enclosure provides considerably more room for flash packages than conventional enterprise SSD formats.
The company will demonstrate its liquid-cooled NX1 series E1.S NVMe drives at the same event, reflecting the increasing thermal demands placed on densely packed data centre storage. Liquid cooling is becoming more attractive as manufacturers attempt to push faster interfaces into increasingly confined server environments.
Kioxia has not announced commercial availability or pricing for the upgraded GP-series drive, and the 20 million IOPS figure remains a manufacturer performance claim pending independent testing. The technology will debut at the OCP Global Summit, where the company plans to showcase its latest storage developments.
