Kioxia and Dell have managed to fit a massive 157 PB of raw flash storage into a single 42U server rack. The configuration runs Dell's software-defined ObjectScale object storage platform on 16 PowerEdge R7725xd servers, which together carry 640 of Kioxia's 245.76 TB LC9 Series SSDs. Kioxia calls it the industry's first 157 PB single-rack object store, a claim it bases on its own market survey. Each 2U server holds 40 of the E3.L drives, the same setup the two companies showed off in May at 9.8 PB per server, so the 16 servers take up 32U and leave 10U of the rack free.

The LC9 drives are PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs built on Kioxia's eighth-generation BiCS FLASH QLC with a 32-die stack. The full 245.76 TB capacity is limited to the E3.L form factor, though, since the 2.5-inch and E3.S versions top out at 122.88 TB, which would roughly halve the rack to about 78.6 PB. Dell's George Papadopoulos says customers can "consolidate more data into fewer systems and racks" while cutting down on cabling, power, and cooling.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced a breakthrough in high-density storage infrastructure, collaborating with Dell Technologies to deliver a 2U server configuration capable of scaling to an unprecedented 9.8 petabytes (PB) of flash storage. By combining the Dell PowerEdge R7725xd server with AMD EPYC processors and 40 KIOXIA LC9 Series E3.L form factor 245.76 terabyte (TB) NVMe SSDs, the companies are enabling a new class of storage-optimized platforms built to meet the demands of AI, large-scale data lakes, and data-intensive enterprise workloads.

Together, Dell Technologies and Kioxia have a long history of enabling scalable infrastructure for data-driven applications. This latest milestone underscores a shared commitment to advancing high-density architectures that improve performance, reduce energy consumption, and maximize data center efficiency.

Kioxia showcased its latest BG7 line of client mainstream NVMe SSDs, which will be aimed mostly at PC OEMs and range in capacities from 256 GB to 2 TB. The Kioxia BG7 series is actually the first client SSD solution to use the latest BiCS Gen 8 3D flash memory with CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology. Thanks to the new BiCS Gen 7 3D flash, the Kioxia BG7 series SSDs promise random read and write of up to 1,000,000 IOPS and sequential performance of up to 7,000 MB/s, which is up to 10 and 16 percent higher random and sequential performance compared to its BG6 series predecessor. These are PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs that will be coming in various M.2 form factors, including 2230, 2242, and M.2 2280, that will probably find their way into many workstations, desktops, laptops, and all-in-one PCs.

In addition to the new BG7 SSD series, Kioxia also showcased its LC9 245.76 TB enterprise SSD, which we have seen at the FMS 2025 show and uses the same BiCS Flash Generation 8 QLC 3D flash memory. It features a 32-die stack of 2 terabit (Tb) 3D flash memory with the same CBA technology, which enables industry-first 8 TB capacity in a small 154 BGA package. The Kioxia LC9 comes in a 2.5-inch and Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.L form factor, and since it packs 245.76 TB in such a small package, we could not pass up the opportunity to take a picture of holding almost 1 PB in our hand.