KIOXIA Announces XG7 PCIe 4 NVMe SSDs for Notebooks at Dell Technologies World Virtual Show 2021

Dell Technologies World was held this past week and it is a shining example of our ability to overcome and adapt. Where thousands of people would once have flown to DTW from every corner of the world, this years event was held virtually and available online.  Virtual keynotes.  Virtual booths.  Virtual announcements. Virtual product displays.  And of course access to the right people to initiate any of the countless Skype, Zoom, Cisco or Microsoft Teams meetings.  The virtual booths were very impressive as one can see here with access to the KIOXIA Virtual Booth.

Clicking this link (or the photo) will bring you to the KIOXIA Booth where you can see everything they have to offer from every angle.

There were a few surprises as we made our way through the Booth.  For instance…KIOXIA BiCS flash.  We knew that the current Gen TLC could get us up to 1TB of storage per package, but what about the newest KIOXIA QLC BiCS memory?  Would you believe that KIOXIA can now achieve QLC storage of 2.66TB of information in a single flash chip?  If you think about it, that is unbelievable considering that could be in your cell phone; 2.66TB of storage.  That is equal to 3458 filing cabinets filled with documents, stored in a chip the size of a quarter. Or 1330 hours of HD movies…on a single chip the size of a quarter.

KIOXIA also announced the newest XG7 PCIe 4.0 SSD…for notebooks amongst other things.  I mention this because, well, I am a bit frustrated.  PCIe 4 and the incredible transfer speeds it brings have been around for some time now.  There are a ton of PCIe 4.0 laptops out there, both Intel and AMD but… have you seen one that can achieve PCIe 4.0 speeds as of yet?  Nope.  Not one. Understanding the reasoning, heat has been an issue with the higher data transfer speeds associated with PCIe 4.0 and there hasn’t been a release of a single Gen 4 SSD to date that doesn’t recommend, or need a heat sink of some type. The simple fact is that a PCIe 4 SSD running at 7GB/s would burn your leg as the ultrabook, or laptop, would become the heatsink for that SSD.  Maybe, just maybe… KIOXIA can change that.

The KIOXIA XG7 will be available for client notebooks and ultrabooks in the first half of 2021 at capacities up to 4TB and with a performance increase of 2X present PCIe 3.0 read speeds and 1.6X write.  Roughly calculated… that means that we may be seeing PCIe performance of 7GB/s read and up to 5.6GB/s write in a portable soon enough.  Very exciting news!  In fact, if you watched the video above, you will notice a XG-7P version which is intended for gamers and capable of top performance and top capacities.

Always exciting things in the world of flash!