Here are some of the first pictures of the GoodRAM IRDM Ultimate PCIe Gen 5 M.2 NVMe SSD. Built in the M.2-2580 form-factor, the drive combines Phison's upcoming E26 controller, with what's likely KIOXIA 162-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory. The controller takes advantage of the PCI-Express 5.0 x4 interface, and NVMe 2.0 protocol, offering sequential transfer speeds of around 10 GB/s reads, with around 9.5 GB/s writes. The drive comes in capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB. It comes with a fairly large heatsink included. AMD Socket AM5 will be the first platform to feature CPU-attached PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slots, which goes on sale by late-September. The first PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs, according to AMD, should be here by November.

As reported by BusinessKorea, Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, will source its 3D NAND from Chinese memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC). Known for supplying 3D NAND to Chinese SSD makers, YTMC's reported contract with Apple will fuel the upcoming iPhone 14 SKU manufacturing. Whether or not this partnership will expand to other products, it is essential to have as many storage sources as possible, as Apple sells millions of devices per year. YTMC is on track to deliver 3D NAND flash with the latest Xstacking 3.0 six-plane architecture that provides triple-level cell storage with I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s.

YTMC has joined the list of 3D NAND flash vendors that Apple works with, including SK Hynix, Samsung, Kioxia, and possibly others. This partnership also highlights that the Chinese memory output is sufficient and significant enough to break into more markets worldwide, not remaining exclusive to domestic use.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced that it has begun sampling the latest generation of its JEDEC e-MMC Ver. 5.1-compliant embedded flash memory products for consumer applications. The new products are available in capacities of 64 and 128 gigabytes (GB) and integrate the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and a controller in a single package.

Demand for mid-range capacities in consumer products such as tablets and IoT devices continues to grow, and though the market continues to shift to UFS, there are cases where e-MMC may still be used. The new KIOXIA e-MMC devices expand the available options. A leading provider of flash memory and storage for consumer applications and mobile devices, KIOXIA has been supporting e-MMC since 2007 and was the first supplier to introduce the higher performance follow-on solution to e-MMC, UFS, in early 2013. Today, the broad KIOXIA lineup of e-MMC and UFS solutions provides support across a wide range of densities (4 GB-1 TB).

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced the launch of the second generation of XL-FLASH, a Storage Class Memory (SCM) solution based on its BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology, which significantly reduces bit cost while providing high performance and low latency. Product sample shipments are scheduled to start in November this year, with volume production expected to begin in 2023.

The second generation XL-FLASH achieves significant reduction in bit cost as a result of the addition of new multi-level cell (MLC) functionality with 2-bit per cell, in addition to the single-level cell (SLC) of the existing model. The maximum number of planes that can operate simultaneously has also increased from the current model, which will allow for improved throughput. The new XL-FLASH will have a memory capacity of 256 gigabits.

This week at the Flash Memory Summit Conference & Expo, KIOXIA America, Inc.—along with the entire industry - will celebrate an important milestone: the 35th anniversary of its invention of NAND flash memory. While looking back at the transformative technology it invented back in 1987, KIOXIA also has its eyes on the future, defining what's next for flash by introducing innovative new products, form factors, and solutions. At FMS, the company will highlight how it is using flash memory to drive advancements and improvements in a wide variety of applications, including mobile computing, the edge, the cloud, data centers and automotive.

KIOXIA's Scott Nelson, executive vice president and chief marketing officer and Shigeo (Jeff) Ohshima, technology executive, SSD Application Engineering will jointly present a keynote session titled: "KIOXIA: 35 Years of Flash & Beyond." The session will highlight the 35th Anniversary of the invention of flash memory and will look forward to how KIOXIA is driving the future of this game-changing technology.

Supporting the Linux Foundation's Software-Enabled Flash open-source project, KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced innovative new software-defined technology and sample hardware based on PCIe and NVMe technology. This technology fully uncouples flash storage from legacy HDD protocols, allowing flash to realize its full capability and potential as a storage media. KIOXIA will highlight Software-Enabled Flash at this week's Flash Memory Summit Conference & Expo at its booth #307 on the show floor and present the session, "NVMe Software-Enabled Flash Storage for Hyperscale Data Centers," at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

o reach efficiency at scale, hyperscale cloud storage needs more from flash storage devices that are currently based on hard disk drive protocols created decades ago. To resolve this, the Linux Foundation's Software-Enabled Flash Community Project will enable industry adoption of a software-defined flash API, giving developers the ability to customize flash storage specific to data center, application and workload requirements. The project was created to benefit the storage developer community with a vendor agnostic, flexible solution that meets the evolving requirements of the modern data center.

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corporation announced today that their joint venture Fab 7 manufacturing facility at Yokkaichi Plant has been approved to receive up to 92.9 billion yen subsidy from the Japanese government. The subsidy will be granted under a designated government program aimed at facilitating corporate investment in cutting-edge semiconductor production facilities and securing stable production of semiconductors in Japan.

Leveraging their 20-year joint venture partnership, Kioxia and Western Digital will continue to accelerate the development and production of cutting-edge flash memory at the Yokkaichi Plant, the largest semiconductor plant in Japan. In addition, the two companies will contribute to the development of semiconductor-related industries and talent.

Kioxia Corporation today announced that it has collaborated with Aerospike to enhance Aerospike Server Community Edition database - resulting in a 36 % increase in application performance compared with the original software without the enhancement by Kioxia. Testing was performed with KIOXIA FL6 Series enterprise NVMe Storage Class Memory (SCM) SSDs with a software enhancement developed by Kioxia.

The Aerospike database is optimized to run on flash memory and SSD devices and is capable of providing high throughput and low latency on flash memory. Featuring Kioxia's SCM solution, XL-FLASH, the PCIe 4.0 and NVMe 1.4 -compliant KIOXIA FL6 Series SSDs bridge the gap between DRAM and TLC-based drives, making them well-suited to latency-sensitive use cases such as caching layer, tiering and write logging. Currently, in mass production, dual-port KIOXIA FL6 Series drives deliver high endurance (60 DWPD) and are available in capacities up to 3,200 GB.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced that its CM7 Series enterprise NVMe SSDs are now shipping to select customers. Optimized for the needs of high-performance, highly efficient servers and storage, the CM7 family is designed with PCIe 5.0 technology in Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S and 2.5-inch form factors

Having introduced the industry's first EDSFF drives designed with PCIe 5.0 technology last year, the addition of the CM7 family expands KIOXIA's leadership position and allows OEM customers to deliver best-in-class performance to end users: The CM7 Series nearly saturates the PCIe 5.0 interface at 14 gigabytes/s read throughput.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced the addition of a high-capacity 512 gigabyte (GB) product to its lineup of EXCERIA HIGH ENDURANCE microSD memory cards. The new 512 GB product delivers sufficient performance and endurance in continuous high-resolution 4K video recordings of dashboard and surveillance cameras.

As the evolution of dashboard cameras continues, with new features such as high-resolution recordings, multiple cameras and parking surveillance being added, the amount of recorded data is steadily increasing. The new KIOXIA 512 GB EXCERIA HIGH ENDURANCE microSDXC UHS-I memory card is designed for the extended recording time required by dashboard cameras, and is capable of up to 17,000 hours of cumulative use and up to 10 hours and 29 minutes of continuous 4K video (3840x2160 pixels, 100 megabits per second) recording. With a read speed of up to 100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write speed of up to 85 MB/s, the new 512 GB card supports the UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) and Video Speed Class 30 (V30) specifications, making it suitable for 4K video recording.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of the industry's first XFM DEVICE Ver. 1.0-compliant removable PCIe standard attached, NVMe storage device: the XFMEXPRESS XT2. With a new form factor and connector, the XFM DEVICE Ver. 1.0 standard delivers an unparalleled combination of features designed to revolutionize ultra-mobile PCs, IoT devices and a variety of embedded applications.

First introduced in August of 2019, and then presented as a proposal to the JEDEC Subcommittee for Electrical Specifications and Command Protocols, KIOXIA XFMEXPRESS XT2 is a new form factor for PCIe/NVMe specification devices. Featuring a powerful combination of small size, speed and serviceability, XFMEXPRESS technology was developed to enhance next-generation mobile and embedded applications. The XFMEXPRESS XT2 from KIOXIA is the first product to meet the specification of the new JEDEC standard.

Kioxia Holdings Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, announced today that it completed the acquisition of Chubu Toshiba Engineering Corporation. The company entered into a share purchase agreement with Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation (a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation) on February 24, 2022, in connection with the acquisition to further strengthen Kioxia Group's technology development capabilities.

This acquisition brings in-house a highly experienced engineering team while also enabling cost efficiencies, which together will improve the enterprise value of the company. The acquisition will enhance Kioxia's technology development capabilities, as well as deliver synergies across the design, operation and production of its manufacturing plants.

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

Last week, Micron revealed its NAND flash plans and so did Western Digital during its investors day. The different NAND flash manufacturers use similar, but far from identical ways to manufacture their NAND flash and WD is working together with Kioxia and the two are using a process called bit column stacked or BiCS NAND. This year the two companies will move to its sixth generation of BiCS NAND which is stacking 162-layers of NAND flash. Most of their competitors are already at 176-layer stacks, although WD and Kioxia still deliver the same capacity NAND chips as its competitors. WD claims that their die size is smaller than the competition, which could be an advantage due to more dies per wafer.

In its presentation, WD listed a single wafer capacity of 100 TB, which is an increase from around 70 TB per wafer in 2020. Although it's not something we can verify, WD claims to have the world's best charge trap cell, which the company claims leads to higher performance compared to its competitors. The slide provided by WD claims a 20 MB/s lead of the competition at 60 MB/s vs. 40 MB/s. Although Western Digital and Kioxia claim to have to invest less to increase their capacity, it would appear that they're behind the competition when it comes to the amount of layers they can stack. The two are only planning what they call BiCS+ at over 200-layers for 2024, which is well over a year behind Micron. The roadmap stretches all the way to 2032, when we should apparently be seeing 500-layer NAND flash, assuming everything goes according to plan. The first BiCS+ NAND will be for datacenter products and WD claims that their first product should see a 60 percent increase in transfer speeds, a 15 percent increase in program bandwidth and a 55 percent increase in bit growth per wafer over the current BiCS6 NAND.

According to TrendForce research, looking at NAND Flash wafers, the pricing of which more sensitively reflects the market, suppliers are increasingly motivated to cut prices in exchange for sales due to weak retail demand since March and a more conservative outlook for shipments of other end products. The price of NAND Flash wafers is expected to begin falling in May and the supply of NAND Flash will gradually overtake demand in 2H22. The price decline of NAND Flash wafers in 3Q22 may reach 5~10%.

At the same time, TrendForce indicates that February's contamination incident at Kioxia was expected to tighten the market in 2Q22 and 3Q22. However, as a consequence of rising inflation and the war between Russia and Ukraine, market demand for consumer products in the traditional peak season of the second half of the year is trending conservative and the prices of client SSD, eMMC, and UFS in 3Q22 will be flat compared to 2Q22, breaking from the original expectation that prices may rise. In terms of enterprise SSDs, as demand for data centers remains strong, no significant correction in demand has yet been observed. However, as the overall NAND Flash market gradually moves into oversupply, prices will only grow slightly by approximately 0~5% in 3Q22.

Next week at Dell Technologies World, KIOXIA America, Inc. will be on hand to demonstrate how its innovative solid state drives (SSDs) are accelerating customer application performance and enabling product breakthroughs. From SSDs designed with PCIe 5.0 technology that boost power and performance to the industry's first lineup of Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S SSDs, best in class drives from KIOXIA are used in a number of Dell product lines.

KIOXIA, the inventor of NAND flash, sits at the forefront of flash storage and SSD innovation. Achievements such as the introduction of 3D flash memory, XL-FLASH storage class memory, and new form factors and interfaces underscore the contributions the company has made toward enabling next-gen applications - and transforming the digital world.

In a move that bolsters its comprehensive PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive (SSD) portfolio, Kioxia Corporation has introduced the KIOXIA XG8 Series of client SSDs for high-end notebooks, desktops, gaming systems, workstations, as well as data center boot applications. Designed to bring next-generation performance to demanding client environments, the XG8 Series enables power users to take advantage of PCIe Gen4 x4 speed and ample storage space.

The XG8 Series is available in an M.2 type 2280 form factor and supports optional security features using the latest TCG Pyrite 2.01 and TCG Opal 2.01 standards to ensure data is kept secure at home, in the office or on the road. In addition, the XG8 Series features end-to-end data path protection for greater data integrity.

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) have finalized a formal agreement to jointly invest in the first phase of the Fab 7 (Y7) manufacturing facility at Kioxia's industry-leading Yokkaichi Plant in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. With construction of the first phase of Y7 completed, the joint-venture investment will enable initial production output beginning in the fall of this year. This marks another important milestone in the 20-year strategic joint-venture partnership between the two companies.

"We are very pleased to further deepen our strategic partnership with Western Digital through this joint investment in Y7," said Nobuo Hayasaka, President and CEO of Kioxia. "The rapid digitization of societies underpins accelerating use of memory products. We will continue to leverage our technological partnership and economies of scale to develop and produce cutting-edge semiconductor products and achieve organic corporate growth."

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today held a groundbreaking ceremony for its state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication facility (Fab2) at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Utilizing AI-based cutting-edge manufacturing, the new facility will contribute towards possible expansion of production of its proprietary 3D flash memory BiCS FLASH at the Kitakami Plant. Construction of the Fab2 facility is scheduled to be completed in 2023. The Fab2 facility will have an earthquake-absorbing structure and environmentally friendly design that utilizes advanced energy saving manufacturing equipment and renewable energy sources. In addition, an administration building will be constructed to accommodate the control management and technical departments in response to the increased staff.

"As a leader in memory, this Fab2 facility will become Kioxia's key manufacturing hub to produce our memory products at scale. We are planning to introduce automated in-facility transfers and advanced production control to make Fab2 a truly world-class smart fabrication facility," said Nobuo Hayasaka, President and CEO, Kioxia. "Fab2 will be able to intelligently coordinate and optimize its production with Fab1 at Kitakami Plant as well as our fabs in the Yokkaichi Plant, enabling the company to seize opportunities in the growing memory market in a timely manner." Under its mission of uplifting the world with memory, Kioxia is focused on developing initiatives to strengthen the competitiveness of its memory and SSD business, which it has developed over the past 35 years since inventing NAND flash memory in 1987. Kioxia remains committed to creating consistent and sustainable growth through timely capital investments that meet growing market demand.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has started sampling new Automotive Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 embedded flash memory devices. The new line-up utilizes the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and is available in capacities from 64 gigabytes (GB) to 512 GB to support the various requirements of evolving automotive applications that elevate driver experiences.

The storage requirement for automotive applications continue to increase as infotainment systems and ADAS in cars become more sophisticated. UFS is well-suited to support the high-performance and density needs of these applications. The new devices support a wide temperature range (-40°C to +105°C), meet AEC-Q100 Grade 2 requirements and offer enhanced reliability capabilities that increasingly complex automotive applications require.

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced it will begin construction of a state-of-the-art new fabrication facility (Fab2) at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan for the possible expansion of production of its proprietary 3D Flash memory BiCS FLASH. Construction of the facility is scheduled to commence in April 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2023.

The new Fab2 facility will utilize AI-based cutting-edge manufacturing to increase production capacity of the entire Kitakami Plant and further enhance product quality, allowing Kioxia to expand its business organically and take advantage of the medium to long term growth of the flash memory market driven by the accelerating adoption of cloud services, 5G, IoT, AI, automated driving and the metaverse.

KIOXIA America, Inc., today announced that it is sampling its 2nd generation PCIe 5.0 SSD for enterprise and data center customers. After being the first vendor to offer a drive using the PCIe 5.0 interface, KIOXIA has now introduced the new CD8 Series data center NVMe SSD family. CD8 SSDs double the bandwidth per lane over PCIe 4.0 SSDs from 16 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) to 32GT/s and are optimized for hyperscale data center and enterprise server-attached workloads.

"Today, PCIe 4.0 SSDs are considered at the forefront in terms of delivering the highest levels of drive performance," commented Greg Wong, founder and principal analyst, Forward Insights. "Next generation PCIe 5.0 SSDs provide twice the level of performance, and will continue to propel the PCIe/NVMe SSD market - which is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 20% out to 2026."

Kioxia Corporation today announced that its KIOXIA PM7 Series of enterprise SAS SSDs are now available for customer evaluation. Targeted at enterprise applications and use cases - including high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, caching layer, and financial trading and analysis - the new drives bring improved performance, reliability and security to enterprise servers and storage. With an emphasis on security, the PM7 Series is FIPS 140-2 certified and currently under test for FIPS 140-3 certification.

Designed for modern IT infrastructures, 24G SAS (SAS-4) doubles effective bandwidth over 12 Gb/s SAS (SAS-3). Featuring Kioxia's 5th generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory, the PM7 Series delivers sequential read performance of up 4.2 Gigabytes (GB) per second (GB/s) and 720K random read IOPS, achieving approximately 20% performance improvement over the previous generation KIOXIA PM6 Series. The new Kioxia drives are available in capacities up to 30.72 terabytes (TB), making them the industry's highest capacity 2.5-inch SAS SSD.