The Kioxia BG7 is out about two and a half years after the Kioxia BG6. The new SSDs are designed to provide lower-cost SSDs for PCs. Commonly, we see the Kioxia BG line deployed in OEM systems, and they are less commonly found online for individual sale. Let us get to the specs of the new drives.
Kioxia BG7 Launched for Low-Cost M.2 NVMe SSDs
The new SSDs utilize Kioxia’s new BiCS FLASH Generation 8 to get more density. Also new in this generation is the M.2 2242 (42mm) form factor that we have seen a number of devices use. A great example is actually the Xsight Labs E1 DPU 1U server. Unlike that high-end server, this is meant for the value SSD segment as a DRAM-less offering.
In terms of specs, this is still a PCIe Gen4 drive with capacities ranging from 256GB to 2TB. You can see the specs of the drives in the table below:
The new CBA BiCS FLASH gen.8 stands for CMOS directly Bonded to Array. That means there is higher bit density in this generation.
While at first you might wonder why this does not have a 4TB model even though it is using denser NAND, remember that this is for the low-cost segment. At 4TB, you are in a class where customers are often looking for better performance.
Final Words
In the midst of a great DRAM shortage, one has to wonder if this is not going to be the future for many of our devices. One way to lower device costs is to remove DRAM entirely, and that has a bigger impact the more expensive DRAM gets. Hopefully, we will uncover one of these drives in a system at some point so we can benchmark it.
KIOXIA 512GB SSD PN:OCKGXJ M.2 2230 (no built in dram, uses system ram over pcie for mapping tables) was in the $300 Dell 15 DC15255 laptop I purchased from Costco a month ago. I mean, it’s fine for the laptop purpose of paying online bills and managing checkbook etc.
If i were building a homelab server or work pc for my small business I’d want to spend extra for quality storage, not resign to using inferior storage. It sucks and makes me mad how we became so dependent on a few major companies to supply all of our silicon needs. We put all of our eggs into one basket?
With Al being so popular, how can you make so many grammatical errors? Even your headline said “for” instead of “four.”