NVIDIA and its partners are pushing towards the next phase of 'AI memory,' and based on a new report, Kioxia plans to develop commercial SSDs that will be 100x faster than traditional ones.
NVIDIA's Plans to Pivot Away From HBM Would Likely Include the Adoption of Blazing-Fast HBF Solutions From Partners
Well, it seems like NVIDIA is eying a replacement for HBM technology and is apparently looking towards improving conventional SSDs to the point where they can offer higher performance than modern-day HBM solutions. Now, in a report by Nikkei, it is revealed that Kioxia is partnering up with NVIDIA to develop AI SSDs that could be 100 times faster than conventional solutions, and it is intended to replace HBM by offering higher capacities, and by being mounted directly on the GPU.
NVIDIA claims to want to achieve 200 million IOPS with the solution built by Kioxia, and the SSD manufacturer will likely utilize two different SSDs, each with 100 million IOPS, to achieve the objective. The solution is claimed to offer PCIe 7.0 connection to achieve the speeds NVIDIA desires, and more importantly, there is a need for a 'rework' from ground-zero to replace HBM with an SSD-like solution, and based on what Kioxia has disclosed in the past, we are likely looking at the entry of HBF (High-Bandwidth Flash) from the firm.
HBF is the answer to the limitations posed by NAND memory, and SanDisk originally developed the standard. The key advantage of HBF is that it can offer immensely high capacities, scaling up to terabytes of memory capacity per device, which means that a traditional data center can leverage the large pool of memory for inferencing workloads. However, HBF isn't the only way Kioxia can achieve the objectives set by NVIDIA, rather the firm has its bet on solutions like XL-Flash, which is a is a high-performance NAND technology.
It is interesting to witness the industry overcome the limitations present with HBM and scale up to newer solutions, and by the looks of it, NAND is going to play a vital role in the future of AI memory.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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