Kioxia, a prominent storage manufacturer, has established a substantial partnership with NVIDIA. Their joint endeavor focuses on developing an ultra-high-speed solid-state drive (SSD) tailored explicitly for AI servers. This cutting-edge SSD exhibits a random read performance of up to 100 million IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), a figure that significantly eclipses the current top-tier SSD benchmark of around 3 million IOPS. This represents a nearly 100-fold leap in performance.

This technological milestone is strategically aimed at alleviating data transmission bottlenecks encountered during the training and deployment phases of large-scale AI models. According to reports, the SSD is engineered to facilitate direct connection and seamless data exchange with GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). By circumventing the traditional CPU (Central Processing Unit) relay step, it substantially elevates data transmission efficiency.

Anticipated to hit the market before 2027, the product will embrace the PCIe 7.0 interface standard. The overarching goal extends beyond merely expanding GPU memory capacity; it also aspires to partially supplant HBM (high-bandwidth memory) in AI servers. This move promises to deliver a storage solution for AI computing that is not only more cost-effective but also highly adaptable and easily scalable.