Kioxia Slips 100M IOPS Flash Drive to 2028; PCIe 7.0 Ecosystem Sets 2028 Clock

Kioxia says its next-generation XL-Flash Gen 3 storage class memory, paired with PCIe 7.0, targets 100 million random read IOPS by 2028—one year later than the company’s earlier 2027 goal. The slip isn’t attributed to problems in the flash silicon itself, but to how long it will take the broader industry to certify the PCIe 7.0 ecosystem. Kioxia’s GP1 Series SSD reached evaluation-sample status at FMS 2026 in Santa Clara on August 4, delivering 10 million random read IOPS using a 512-byte block size over PCIe 6.0. Gen 3 triples read performance versus Gen 2 and boosts write performance by 150%, with improved read energy efficiency projected at 40% and 80% for writes.