Kioxia’s nearly faster than Optane SSD

Kioxia has announced its GP1 SSD, a Gen 2 XL-FLASH drive delivering 10 million IOPS and sub-5μs latency, nearly eight times faster than Intel's Optane DC P5800X in IOPS terms, targeting AI memory extension. The drive uses PCIe 6 and NVMe v2.2, with 512-byte data access, up to 50 DWPD endurance, and is available in E1.S and E3.S form factors, aiming to lower the cost of expanding AI memory compared to HBM or DRAM.

flash Kioxia’s nearly faster than Optane SSD Kioxia https://www.blocksandfiles.com/flash/2026/07/30/kioxia-launches-kv-caching-ssd-and-ai-focussed-fingernail-drive/5280989 has announced a GP1 flash drive with 10 million IOPS and a <5μs latency, almost eight times faster than Intel’s now storage-class memory Optane drive in request-per-sec terms and with lower latency. The company says it enables flash-based memory extension to help address the growing performance and memory demands of AI infrastructure. It’s designed to support AI storage architectures which extend High Bandwidth Memory HBM as a fast flash memory tier. This approach lets AI systems access larger datasets at a significantly lower cost than adding more HBM, while improving GPU utilization. Kioxia America’s Neville Ichhaporia, SVP and GM of the SSD business unit, said: “The AI memory wall is a critical challenge for our industry to solve on the way to growing the scale and capability of AI deployment. Kioxia's XL-FLASH is uniquely positioned to deliver the extremely high performance and low-latency data access needed to support GPUs as a memory extension tier. It also offers a significantly lower cost per gigabyte than expanding in-node HBM or DRAM capacity. The KIOXIA GP1 SSD is a breakthrough product that will enable a new, leading-edge AI memory topology and demonstrates KIOXIA's continuous commitment to advancing AI." The GP1 drive uses generation 2 https://www.blocksandfiles.com/ai-ml/2025/09/15/kioxia-developing-100-million-iops-ssd-for-nvidia/1612354 XL-FLASH with SLC 1bit/cell format, a PCIe 6 interconnect and NVMe v2.2. The 2021 era Gen 2 Optane DC P5800X had a dual-port PCIe gen 4 interconnect, 4x slower per lane than gen 6 PCIe, a <6μs latency, and put out 1.5 million 4k IOPS; that is, with a 4KB block size, 8 times larger than the 512-byte blocks used in Kioxia’s 10 million IOPS measurement. The Optane drive put out 1,500,000 x 4,096 bytes = 6,144,000,000 bytes/sec c5.86 MBps. Kioxia’s GP1 delivers 10,o00,000 x 512 bytes = 5,120,000,000 bytes/sec c4.88 MBps and is pipped in bandwidth terms by Optane. Still, the GP1 is the closest an SSD has come in performance terms to Optane. XL-FLASH, Kioxia says, delivers significantly higher IOPS, finer-grained 512-byte data access, and lower power consumption per I/O compared to conventional TLC-based SSDs. The architecture is designed to scale across generations to 100 million IOPS. The GP1 drives is available in air-cooled 3.S, E1.S 9.5 mm/15mm form factors, with cold-plate liquid cooling capability in E3.S and E1.S 9.5mm form factors. It has up to 50 DWPD drive writes per day endurance which compares to gen 2 Optane’s 100 DWPD. Kioxia has revealed no other performance numbers for the GP1, nor its capacity levels. Optane P5800X drives came in 400GB, 800GB, 1.6 T and 3.2TB capacities. Kioxia’s gen 1 XL-FLASH-based FL6 https://www.blocksandfiles.com/flash/2021/09/14/kioxia-announces-optane-class-ssd/1612069? gl=1 1alozzv ga MzkxNDQyMTIwLjE3NzcwMzc0NTc. ga NSDTXHMMN0 czE3ODU3NDk3OTMkbzI1MyRnMSR0MTc4NTc1MDM1NiRqNjAkbDAkaDA. drive came in 800 GB and 3.2TB capacities and had 29µs read and 8µs write latencies. It provided up to 7.2 GBps and 6.2 GBps sequential read-write speeds using PCIe gen 4. Quadruple that with PCIe gen 6 and we arrive in the 28.8/24.8 GBps sequential read-write area. Indeed, Kioxia’s recently announced CM10 https://www.blocksandfiles.com/flash/2026/07/30/kioxia-launches-kv-caching-ssd-and-ai-focussed-fingernail-drive/5280989 , positioned as a a super-fast SSD for AI inferencing and KV caching workloads, does deliver up to 28.4 sequential read GBps. Perhaps the GP1 will be in this area as well, and have up to 3.2 TB capacity. The CM10 outputs up to 6.29 million 4k IOPS, which we calculate to be 3.22 MBps, making the GP1, with its 4.88 MBps, faster Nvidia’s CMX scheme for KV Cache memory extension envisages chassis full of SSDs talking via an in-chassis BlueFieId-4 DPU to a GPU’s server’s BlueField-4 with SSD contents streamed by it into a GPU’s high-bandwidth memory HBM . On this basis Kioxia would need to sell its GP1 to these chassis builders; AIC, Quanta Cloud Technology and Supermicro for example, and their storage supplier clients. When Optane supply security became risky in 2021, VAST Data qualified Kioxia’s FL6 as a metadata storage device for the role previously supported by Optane. Intel killed off the Optane line in 2022. VAST looks a likely prospect for Kioxia’s GP1 drives. Evaluation GP1 samples will be available to select customers by the end of 2026 and the GP1 Series will be showcased at FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage, taking place August 4 – 6 in Santa Clara, California. Kioxia talks about its GP1 Series so we can expect more products in this line to be forthcoming.