SK hynix is pushing hard on next-gen AI NAND, and 2027 seems to be its next major milestone. According to a ZDNet report, the company is working with NVIDIA to build ultra-fast AI-focused NAND chips that could hit up to 30x the performance of today's enterprise SSDs. Early samples are planned for late 2026, with second-gen entering mass production by the end of 2027. A big part of that effort is SK hynix AI-N P high-performance SSD architecture aimed at removing I/O bottlenecks in large AI inference workloads. ZDNet says the redesigned NAND and controller are already in proof-of-concept (PoC) testing with NVIDIA. SK hynix is targeting 25 million IOPS on PCIe Gen 6 for first samples next year, and 100 million IOPS for the production version in 2027. For comparison, current enterprise SSDs manage roughly 2-3 million IOPS (high-end models).

The roadmap also includes AI-N B, better known as HBF (High Bandwidth Flash), developed with Sandisk. An alpha spec is expected in early 2026 with evaluation units coming in 2027. Behind all these efforts a broader strategy starts to unveil with SK hynix next-gen AI-NAND chips split into three. First we have AI-N P (ultra-high performance SSD) for performance, AI-N B (High Bandwidth Flash) for bandwidth, and AI-N D (High Capacity/Low Cost SSD) for higher-capacity and lower-cost designs. ZDNet adds that SK hynix views the AI market as two distinct fronts: large data-center deployments demanding massive throughput, and on-device AI favoring low-power efficiency. SK hynix is positioning its AI-N lineup to serve both with the 2026 AI-N P generation expected to offer roughly 8-10x the performance of current SSDs.