Kioxia has announced the LD4, marking its first solid state drive built on the EDSFF E1.L ruler form factor. The series uses eighth generation 218 layer BiCS FLASH QLC NAND to target high density 1U servers in hyperscale data centers. Samples are currently shipping to select customers ahead of a public demonstration at the OCP Global Summit this month.
Kioxia designs the LD4 for read intensive cloud workloads and scale out storage environments. The drive connects through a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface and complies with NVMe 2.0e alongside the OCP Datacenter NVMe SSD 2.6 specifications. The internal architecture uses QLC memory across 218 vertical layers to maximize capacity per server rack while maintaining low power consumption.
Current hardware options include 15.36TB and 30.72TB capacities. Kioxia plans to expand future density up to 122.88TB on the exact same E1.L physical footprint. Initial evaluation units are in customer hands now, with the hardware scheduled for display at the 2026 OCP Global Summit.
