Overview
- Kioxia introduced the KIOXIA GP series, a new SSD class that allows GPUs to access high-speed flash directly as an extension of HBM.
- The GP drives use low-latency XL-FLASH and are tuned for 512-byte access granularity, higher IOPS, and lower per-IO power versus traditional TLC SSDs.
- Evaluation samples of the GP series are planned for late 2026 for selected customers, with a Super High IOPS SSD emulator demonstrated at GTC booth 3522.
- Kioxia also announced the CM9 PCIe 5.0 E3.S SSD using TLC, offering up to 25.6 TB capacity and 3 DWPD endurance, with samples targeted for Q3 2026.
- The products align with NVIDIA's Storage-Next initiative to expand GPU-accessible memory for large-scale inference as model sizes and KV cache demands grow.