Kioxia: Storage Portfolio Review

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Kioxia is cultivating a new era of memory as a global leader in flash memory and solid-state drives (SSDs).

The company earned nearly ¥1.2 trillion ($9.36 billion) as revenues grew 19% in 2021. The strong demand for flash memory has remained steady, due to more people working, learning, and interacting online.

Finding the best storage solution for your specific needs can be complicated in an evolving environment. However, the flash memory pioneer is still releasing innovative storage products for enterprises.

Kioxia’s newest SSD series is meant for hyperscale data centers and enterprise workloads. Its arrays power for companies that require artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing, content streaming, cashing layers, financial trading, and analysis.

Let’s take a closer look at Kioxia’s core storage offerings and how their partners are using Kioxia storage arrays for several applications. We’ll also go over what users are saying about Kioxia products and how it compares with other storage companies in the market:

Kioxia storage portfolio

In 1987, Kioxia created its first NAND flash memory device, helping change the way we view, store, and interact with data. In 2007, they released of their first 3D flash memory technology, and they still deliver the high density and advanced 162-layer 3D flash memory technology.

Kioxia’s storage portfolio includes SSDs for business applications, such large and scaling data centers and other uses:

  • Enterprise SSDs from Kioxia are designed for traditional servers and storage needs. All deliver high-performance reliability for mission-critical enterprise systems. And Kioxia offers options for mixed-use, read-intensive, and write-intensive SSDs for all product categories.
  • Data Center SSDs feature low power consumption without compromising performance. These SSDs are meant for high-performing data centers and are optimized for large-scale cloud data centers.
  • Client SSDs are a more compact option with low power consumption for clients. These drives are designed for uses including PCs, entry-level servers, and IoT applications.

Kioxia storage partners

Kioxia Holdings has 19 subsidiaries and six company affiliations: including the design, development, and production of flash memory products; cleaning and health care; sales; marketing; and research and development. However, its focus does not seem to be on expanding storage partners at this time.

The global organization is currently working with two companies: Arrow Electronics and Aerospike. Arrow Electronics is a technology development company that partners with electronics manufacturers to offer customers a range of products. And Aerospike is a partner that uses Kioxia’s technology to run their real-time data platform, which enables organizations to use parallelism and hybrid memory.

Kioxia chooses partners selectively and strategically and seems to be more focused on mergers and acquisitions. As such, the company recently announced it would acquire the semiconductor designer Chubu Toshiba Engineering (CTE) Corporation.

The acquisition is expected to create synergies across the design, operation, and production of Kioxia manufacturing plants, improve enterprise value by enhancing its development capabilities, and attract new engineering talent.

Kioxia storage use case

Kioxia offers its data expertise to the advantage of customers in every industry around the world. For example, the health care industry has been steadily transforming as more advanced medical devices and other Internet of Things (IoT) sensors are used to treat patients more effectively. However, one area of medicine that is often overlooked when it comes to technologies is the field of medical research and development for mental health disorders.

There are millions of people who suffer from a variety of mental health disorders. And according to the World Economic Forum & Harvard School of Public Health Report, it is projected that mental health disorders will cost the economy over $6 trillion by the year 2030.

Researchers suggested that understanding how the brain works via real-time scans and analysis will allow us to improve mental health efforts. But to process cross-sectional brain scans and conduct real-time neural activity analysis, researchers need machines that can process hundreds and hundreds of petabytes.

Steve Fingerhut, president and chief business officer at Pliops, explains that Kioxia SSDs are on track to build a 128 TB SSD, which can help ease the cost and suffering of those with mental health needs. Additionally, Fingerhut says that medical research combined with high-performance computing is helping medical researchers better understand how the brain works.

Fingerhut goes on to say that along with medical research advancements, many other aspects of human life will be enabled by flash memory. We are already beginning to see how the IoT and edge computing can shape our world with smart cities, augmented reality, and real-time analytics.

Recent reports indicate that Kioxia is also active the automotive industry. Since smart cars and automobiles are becoming more sophisticated through infotainment systems and advanced driver assistance systems, the automotive industry needs devices that can support large amounts of data with no downtime. It is currently sampling its Automotive Universal Flash Storage, designed to support the high performance and density of automotive applications.

Users of Kioxia storage

Highly rated companies — including Apple, HPE, and Microsoft — use Kioxia microchips, flash memory, and SSDs to help power their organizations and their products.

For enterprises and organizations that require the highest quality in speed, performance, and support, Kioxia is a leader in the market.

Industry recognition of Kioxia

Kioxia is always looking for new talent to drive innovations to solve the problems of tomorrow. The company has received numerous awards and recognition for its work, including flash memory inventions and groundbreaking research.

Since 2020, Kioxia has received the following honors:

  • Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovators 2022
  • 2021 IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award “For pioneering and sustained contributions to high-density, three-dimensional flash memory”
  • AEC/APC Symposium Asia 2021 Best Paper Award for Application of Contrastive Representation Learning to Unsupervised Defect Classification in Semiconductor Manufacturing
  • Silver Prize of the 2020 Field Innovation Award from the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI)
  • 2020 VLSI Test of Time Award
  • JIII 2020 National Commendation for Invention, Imperial Invention Prize
  • 18th JSAP Plasma Electronics Award 2020
  • APEX/JJAP Editorial Contribution Award from The Japan Society of Applied Physics 2020

Kioxia in the storage market

Kioxia is a global leader in the storage market, with about 20% of the flash memory market share. Second only to Samsung, they are ahead of other top companies, including Western Digital, SK Hynix, Micron, and Intel.

The company hoped to acquire Western Digital at the end of 2021, but talks are currently at a standstill. But if that deal goes through, Kioxia will be the number one NAND flash memory manufacturer in the world.

Kioxia continues to develop next-generation embedded flash products to increase performance for computing products from data centers to smartphones. The company’s goal is to enhance its capabilities and end-user experiences in “the 5G era and beyond.”

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Nahla Davies
Nahla Davies
Nahla Davies is a software developer and writer. Before devoting her work full time to technical writing, she managed—among other intriguing things—to serve as a lead programmer at an Inc. 5,000 experiential branding organization whose clients include Samsung, Time Warner, Netflix, and Sony.

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