Kioxia and SanDisk hit record 3D NAND density: 332 layers, 37 Gb/mm², 4,800 MT/s I/O

Kioxia and SanDisk have demonstrated a new BiCS10 3D QLC NAND device with record areal density of 37 Gb/mm²—the highest density 3D NAND formally introduced to date. The device features 332 active layers, up to 4,800 MT/s interface speed, and is aimed at data center-grade SSDs that need to maximize storage density for AI workloads. Built on their latest BiCS10 process, the technology is expected to enable ultra-high-capacity data center storage at lower cost or higher margins compared to competing 3D QLC NAND devices once yields reach target levels.

The two manufacturers also implemented power-isolated low-tapped termination (PI-LTT) to reduce power consumption on high-speed output drivers without sacrificing signal integrity. The BiCS10 QLC device is being targeted at data center-grade SSDs for AI-oriented applications, supporting the growing infrastructure demand for massive, dense storage capacity alongside GPU clusters. The company estimated capacity at roughly 1.33 Tb per die, though neither Kioxia nor SanDisk disclosed the actual capacity specification.

For architects provisioning massive storage for training clusters and inference pipelines, this milestone signals the storage layer can scale capacity far faster than GPU provisioning. The move to QLC (four bits per cell) from TLC (three bits) at the highest densities reflects the economic pressure on data centers to pack more terabytes per watt and per socket into rack footprints—a critical constraint as model training data and inference caches grow.