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Kioxia introduced its LD4-series solid-state drives (SSDs) in an E1.L form factor with capacities up to 122.88 TB on Friday, designed for hyperscale data centers. The manufacturer states these drives use proven BiCS8 3D QLC NAND technology and target read-intensive workloads such as AI data repositories and object storage. While Kioxia lists PCIe 5.0 compliance, the drives operate at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds of up to 16 GT/s per lane, providing a theoretical maximum bandwidth of approximately 7.88 GB/s in each direction.

Currently, Kioxia offers LD4 drives with capacities of up to 30.72 TB, though the company has validated an architecture capable of supporting 122.88 TB configurations. No specific release date for these larger drives has been revealed. The manufacturer did not disclose actual performance characteristics, including sequential read and write speeds, random IOPS, latency, endurance ratings like DWPD or TBW, nor power consumption. These details are often critical for storage operators evaluating cost, performance, and longevity.

The primary advantage of the LD4-series and its E1.L form factor is its ability to house numerous 3D NAND flash packages on an elongated printed circuit board. Measuring 318.75 mm in length by 38.4 mm in height and 9.5 mm thick, this design allows multiple drives to fit into a thin 1U server without increasing rack space requirements. Kioxia is currently sampling 15.36 TB and 30.72 TB versions for select customers. The company plans to demonstrate the technology at the OCP Global Summit in San Jose in mid-October, but has not confirmed when mass production will begin.