As DRAM giants Samsung and SK Hynix accelerate the launch of HBM4, HBM is also booming with the AI boom, and NAND will follow suit. According to the "Nikkei" report, Japan's Kioxia (Kioxia) cooperates with Nvidia and plans to commercialize SSDs in 2027. Its read speed will be nearly 100 times faster than existing models.
The report emphasizes that the SSD jointly developed by Kioxia and NVIDIA is specifically tailored for AI servers and aims to partially replace HBM as a GPU memory expansion solution. Kioxia said that by 2029, nearly half of NAND demand is expected to be AI-related.
According to Nikkei, Koichi Fukuda, chief engineer of Kioxia’s solid-state drive application department, said that the company is advancing development work based on Nvidia’s proposals and requirements. Nikkei previously reported that sample shipments are expected to begin in the second half of 2026.
"Nikkei" explains that traditionally, SSDs are connected to the GPU through the CPU, but Kioxia is now developing SSDs that can be directly connected to the GPU to achieve higher-speed data exchange.
It is worth noting that the random read performance of the new SSD is expected to increase to approximately 100 million IOPS, which is nearly 100 times the current level, thereby accelerating the data processing of the GPU. "Nikkei" reported that NVIDIA's goal is to reach 200 million IOPS, and Kioxia plans to achieve it through a combination of dual SSD units. In addition, these SSDs will also support the next generation PCIe 7.0 interface standard.
It is also worth noting that according to a US investment institution report cited by TechNews, NAND has missed the AI investment boom in the past two years and now finally has a long-awaited rebound. According to the report, with the surge in demand for AI inference and the increased demand for storage with high-speed, large-capacity, and random I/O capabilities, QLC enterprise-class SSD (eSSD) is becoming the preferred solution.
Institutional analysts predict that by 2029, AI-related NAND will account for 34% of the global NAND market, adding approximately US$29 billion to the market. Under the baseline scenario, related deployment may trigger a NAND supply gap of approximately 2% in 2026; under the optimistic scenario, if near-line SSD captures 5% of the market share from HDD, the gap may expand to 8%.
