Kioxia's new QLC drives perform at the same speed as TLC models |
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The Japanese brand Kioxia has introduced the EG7 series of solid-state drives with an M.2 connector. The main selling point of these drives is the combination of a relatively affordable price?achieved through the use of QLC memory?with the performance characteristics of more expensive TLC chips. Kioxia EG7 drives utilize eighth-generation BiCS FLASH technology. According to the manufacturer, the sequential read speed of the proprietary QLC memory is up to 7,000 MB/s, write speed is up to 6,200 MB/s, and random read and write performance is up to 1,000,000 IOPS. The new drives support the NVMe 2.0d (PCIe 4.0) interface and the TCG Opal 2.02 standard. The drives do not have a DRAM buffer; instead, they utilize the PC's resources via Host Memory Buffer technology. The new drives are intended for sale to computer OEMs and are already being supplied to them for testing. Available form factors are M.2 2230/2242/2280. The first PCs equipped with Kioxia EG7 drives will hit the market in the second quarter of 2026. |
