Items tagged with kioxia
It's been a little while since Kioxia last introduced a client solid state drive line, that being the BG4 series we reviewed in 2019. Now a bit over two years later Kioxia is following that up with its new BG5 series, which aims to "bring a suitable balance of performance, cost, and power to everyday gamers and PC users." Does it deliver? That's a question we'll address another day when we have an opportunity to review the latest lineup. In the meantime, we can relay what makes the BG5 series tick and go over the features and specifications, including its status as a PCI Express 4.0 SSD line. The BG5 is built around fifth-generation 3D BiCS Flash memory and packaged in a compact M.2 2230 single-sided...
Read more...
Kioxia has begun shipping a new line of solid state drives for the enterprise market (separate from its recently introduced CD7 line), the EM6 series, though these are unique from past offerings in the segment. These are NVMe-oF (Non-Volatile Memory Express over Fabrics) drives for Ethernet Bunch of Flash (EBOF) systems, which in plain speak means they leverage an Ethernet interface that makes scaling data center storage capacity potentially easier and more cost effective. The key ingredient here is Marvell's 88SN2400 NVMe-oF SSD converter hardware. What that does is convert an NVMe SSD into a single or dual-ported 25-gigabit (Gb) NVMe-oF SSD, allowing data centers to effectively share storage...
Read more...
Kioxia announced a couple of treats for data center clients in need of expansive storage options. The first is the introduction of the first production-ready 9.5mm XD6 Series Enterprise and Data Center Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E1.S solid state drives, and the second is the unveiling of its CD7 Series drives designed with PCI Express 5.0 technology, for what amounts to denser storage with better lane management. More on that in a moment. Let's start with the XD6 Series. Kioxia actually first mentioned its XD6 drives towards the end of last year, as the industry's first EDSFF E1.S SSDs. It's taken a bit find their way to market, but now several months later, they're being deployed for servers...
Read more...
Although it may seem hard to believe, we've experienced the performance blessings of PCIe 4.0-based SSDs for over two years. Performance has ramped to the point that we've currently seeing sequential write and read speeds that are twice their PCIe 3.0-based predecessors. For example, the T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series can hit sequential read/write speeds of 7,400 MB/sec and 7,000 MB/sec, respectively. Now, Kioxia is giving us an early taste of what to expect with next-generation PCIe 5.0-based SSDs. Today's fastest SSDs are coming close to saturating the available bandwidth provided by a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface (8 GB/sec). With PCIe 5.0, the maximum available bandwidth with a PCIe 5.0 x4...
Read more...
Intel Optane holds a unique position in the PC computing space as a high-speed memory that complements system DRAM. The non-volatile memory can accelerate commonly performed tasks and improve overall system responsiveness (including booting) even if you already have a high-speed PCIe 4.0 SSD installed. Kioxia is looking to tap into this market with its new FL6 series of SSDs, which it classifies as Storage Class Memory (SCM). The FL6 SSDs are geared towards the enterprise market and are available in dual-port and PCIe 4.0 NVMe 1.4 configurations. At the heart of the FL6 series is what Kioxia calls XL-Flash-SCM, which is based on 1-bit-per-cell SLC BiCS Flash. The high-speed storage...
Read more...
Western Digital and Kioxia might combine forces to give Samsung a serious run in the NAND flash memory sector. While nothing has been announced, it's said the two firms are in "advanced" discussions about a stock merger valued at $20 billion. A deal could potentially be reached within the next several weeks (before October). Sources who are apparently familiar with the situation claim the talks have been going on for some time now, and recently reached a fever pitch, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The idea being discussed is having Western Digital finance the merger with stock. Western Digital boss David Goeckeler would probably run the outfit. If this happens, it would be...
Read more...
Kioxia America, formerly known as Toshiba Memory America, has unveiled two new lines of solid-state drive (SSDs) that are designed for the enterprise and data center markets. While we've seen some consumer-level SSDs that have been able to achieve breakneck speeds courtesy of the PCIe 4.0 interface, these new Kioxia SSDs are on an elevated plane with respect to performance. First up is the CM6 Series SSD family, which is available in capacities ranging from 800GB up to a mind-boggling 30.72TB. Equally as impressive as the storage capacity of these SSDs are their performance, which is rated at up to 6.9GB/sec for both sequential reads and writes. Random read/write performance checks...
Read more...
A company called Kioxia (spun out of Toshiba) has developed an interesting technology that could potentially pave a path beyond today's quad-level cell (QLC) NAND flash memory chips, into the next-generation of penta-level cell (PLC) parts. It's a breakthrough of sorts, in that it's the world's first three-dimensional semicircular split-gate flash memory cell structure. The name for this tech is Twin BiCS flash. There's a ton of technobabble in the press announcement, but the short version is, Kioxia developed a novel way of packing smaller cells to increase memory density beyond what is possible with today's QLC NAND flash memory technology. "Twin BiCS flash achieves superior program slope and...
Read more...
