- Innogrit N3X SSD delivers 50 DWPD endurance but costs more than typical business drive
- Built for cache, inference and workload that punishes ordinary SSDs
- Runs completely in SLC mode that sacrifices the capacity of serious performance gains
Innogrit N3X SSD introduces a high -own storage solution aimed at the company’s workload with extreme writing requirements.
Completed in Computex 2025 and with Kioxia’s second generation of XL-FLASH operating in SLC mode, the drive is designed to deliver 50 drive writings per day. Day (DWPD) over five years, which far exceeds the endurance of typical enterprise SSDs.
This durability level is impressive, but it also raises questions about the unit costs and whether its benefit will justify the expected premium.
SCM -roots and a specialized architecture
In the heart of N3X, Storage Class Memory (SCM), a memory level is designed to bridge the performance gap between drama and traditional NAND flash.
When used in SLC mode, Kioxia’s XL flash acts as a type of SCM that promising ultra-low latency and high endurance.
Unlike Standard NAND that stores several bits per Cell, prioritizing the operation of XL-FLASH in SLC mode speed and reliability rather than capacity.
This design selection carefully reflects the original goals of Intel’s Nu-Discined Optane Memory and places N3X as a potential successor in the specialized niche.
While SCM technologies like XL-FLASH are not new, they remain relatively rare due to their high costs and specialized applications.
Innogrit’s use of IG5669 PCIE 5.0 Controller with NVME 2.0 -Support allows for impressive performance requirements: Up to 14 GB/s read and 12 GB/s writing speeds along with 3.5 million random read IOPS.
Latence is where N3X especially stands out – read latency under 13 microseconds and write latency as low as 4 microseconds.
If these numbers are consistently obtained, these numbers would place N3X among the fastest SSDs during development.
The drive is marketed for workloads involving sustained writing, in-memory calculation and real-time inference, areas where traditional NAND SSDs often struggle with latency and wear.
However, the decision to function completely in SLC mode significantly reduces the available capacity per year. Nozzle, resulting in smaller drive sizes and a higher cost per day. Gigabytes.
While the drive is offered in capacities ranging from 400 GB to 3.2 TB, these are missing what is expected of today’s biggest SSDs.
Although N3X possesses many of the technical properties of the best portable SSDs, it is not intended for mainstream use.
Its dependence on SCM architecture, although it enables unique performance, places it fixed within the domain of niche business installations.
