246 TB: Kioxia introduces the world’s largest SSD

Kioxia has introduced a 245.76 TB solid-state drive. This is the largest capacity to date, which can hold up to 12.5 thousand files of 20 GB each.

The LC9 drive is designed primarily for storing data from artificial intelligence models and processing hyperscale workloads. The company managed to fit 8 TB of memory cells into just one NAND chip — and this is also the highest data density at this time. To give you an idea of the size: this drive can hold 12.5 thousand 4K movies with a capacity of 20 GB.

The SSD uses a controller of its own design, its name has not yet been disclosed, but the memory chips are known: BiCS8 2Tb 3D QLC NAND. The new product’s case corresponds to the form factor of E3.L data center drives and holds 32 8TB chips, plus a controller.

The drive provides a sequential read speed of up to 12 GB/s. At the same time, the write speed is 3 GB/s. This is extremely good for a device with so many memory chips and, consequently, a very high load on the controller. LC9 can perform random operations at speeds up to 1.3 million. IOPS for reads and up to 50,000 IOPS for writes.

As for the drive’s reliability, it has a daily write rate of 0.3 (almost 74 TB per day). This is not much for a corporate storage, if you do not take into account its total capacity.

The security technologies include kernel-level recovery, pairwise error management, and sudden power loss protection. Encryption (AES-256), CNSA 2.0 firmware digital signature, and post-quantum cryptography algorithms are supported. The manufacturer plans to release the drive in several form factors:

• 2.5-inch U.2 — up to 122.88 TB,
• E3.S — up to 122.88 TB,
• E3.L — up to 245.76 TB.

The LC9 series is currently being tested by the company’s partners and will be presented at the Future of Memory and Storage conference in August 2025. There is no information on the price of the new product yet, most likely it will be known only to the company’s large customers.

Source: Tom’s Hardware