Kioxia accelerates AI with NAND layout, mass-producing PCIe 6.0 and UFS 5.0 products to catch up with Korean manufacturers

Japanese NAND manufacturer Kioxia is accelerating its layout in the AI NAND market. This year, it has launched mass production of the 10th generation (BiCS 10) 332-layer 3D NAND and based on this, introduced the PCIe 6.0 supported data center eSSD "CM10," which has improved sequential read performance by up to 92% compared to the previous generation. In addition, Kioxia plans to start mass production of UFS 5.0 embedded storage by the end of this year, with data transfer speeds approximately doubling compared to UFS 4.1, primarily targeting the AI mobile device market. According to TrendForce data, Kioxia's global NAND market share in the first quarter of this year was 13.9%, ranking third, following Samsung Electronics (31.6%) and SK Hynix (17.6%).

Korean manufacturers are also quickening their pace. Samsung has begun mass production of the PCIe 6.0 eSSD "PM1763" last month, equipped with the 9th generation V-NAND and a 4nm controller, with plans to mass produce UFS 5.0 in the fourth quarter. Samsung also announced that it will start mass production of the 10th generation V-NAND (approximately 430 layers) this month, applying hybrid bonding and triple stacking technology for the first time. Industry analysts believe that Kioxia is quite competitive in terms of the speed of technological iteration, but its production capacity still lags behind Korean manufacturers, and competition in the AI storage market will become even more intense in the future.