Kioxia Unveils First PCIe® 6.0 Enterprise SSDs Powered by 10th-Generation BiCS FLASH™
Kioxia Corporation has expanded its enterprise storage portfolio with the introduction of the KIOXIA CM10 Series, the company’s first line of PCIe® 6.0 enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs). Powered by Kioxia’s latest 10th-generation BiCS FLASH™ TLC 3D flash memory, the new SSDs are engineered to meet the growing performance demands of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and modern enterprise data centers.
The CM10 Series represents a major advancement in enterprise storage technology, delivering substantial improvements in speed, energy efficiency, and cooling capabilities compared with the previous CM9 generation. Designed specifically for AI inference, context caching, and other data-intensive workloads, the new drives also support the NVIDIA CMX™ architecture, enabling faster access to large AI datasets while helping organizations build more efficient next-generation computing infrastructure.
Meeting the Storage Demands of AI
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming enterprise computing. As large language models (LLMs), generative AI platforms, and advanced machine learning applications continue to grow in size and complexity, storage infrastructure has become a critical factor in overall system performance.
Modern AI models increasingly contain trillions of parameters and process context windows involving millions of tokens. These workloads require storage systems capable of moving enormous volumes of data with minimal latency while maintaining consistent throughput under heavy demand.
Kioxia developed the CM10 Series to address these evolving requirements. The company says the new drives are optimized for AI inference environments where high-speed access to stored data directly influences application responsiveness and computational efficiency.
The SSDs also support context caching, an increasingly important function in AI infrastructure that stores frequently accessed data closer to computing resources. Faster context storage enables AI systems to retrieve information more efficiently, reducing bottlenecks and improving overall workload performance.
First PCIe® 6.0 Enterprise SSD from Kioxia
The CM10 Series marks Kioxia’s entry into the PCIe® 6.0 era, bringing significantly higher bandwidth to enterprise storage environments.
PCIe® 6.0 doubles the data transfer capability of the previous generation, enabling enterprise systems to move information more rapidly between processors, memory, accelerators, and storage devices. For AI clusters, hyperscale cloud platforms, and high-performance computing environments, this increased bandwidth helps reduce storage-related bottlenecks while maximizing hardware utilization.
According to Kioxia, the CM10 Series delivers up to 92% higher sequential read performance and approximately 85% higher random read performance compared with the previous-generation CM9 Series SSDs.
These performance gains are expected to benefit a wide range of enterprise applications, including AI inference, virtualization, cloud services, large-scale databases, analytics platforms, and high-performance computing workloads where rapid data access is essential.
Designed for Next-Generation AI Infrastructure
One of the defining characteristics of the CM10 Series is its support for advanced cooling technologies.
For the first time in Kioxia’s enterprise SSD portfolio, the new drives offer direct cold-plate liquid cooling capability in selected form factors. As AI servers continue to generate higher thermal loads due to increasingly powerful GPUs and processors, liquid cooling is becoming an important technology for maintaining optimal operating temperatures while improving overall energy efficiency.
The availability of liquid cooling allows data center operators to deploy more densely packed AI systems without compromising performance or reliability. At the same time, organizations that continue using conventional air-cooled server environments can also deploy the CM10 Series, providing greater flexibility during infrastructure upgrades.
This hybrid approach enables enterprises to adopt advanced cooling technologies at their own pace while maintaining compatibility with existing server architectures.
Powered by 10th-Generation BiCS FLASH™
At the core of the CM10 Series is Kioxia’s 10th-generation BiCS FLASH™, featuring an advanced 332-layer 3D flash memory architecture.
The latest generation of BiCS FLASH™ delivers improvements in storage density, performance, and power efficiency, enabling enterprise SSDs to support increasingly demanding workloads while reducing energy consumption.
The higher layer count allows Kioxia to increase storage capacity without significantly increasing physical footprint, helping data centers maximize storage density within existing server infrastructure.
Improved flash memory efficiency also contributes to lower operating costs by reducing power consumption and thermal output—two increasingly important considerations as AI deployments continue expanding worldwide.
Broad Range of Capacities and Form Factors
To support diverse enterprise deployment requirements, the CM10 Series will be available in multiple industry-standard form factors.
Customers can choose from E3.S, E1.S, and 2.5-inch configurations depending on server architecture and workload requirements. The E3.S and E1.S versions support both traditional air cooling and direct cold-plate liquid cooling in 9.5 mm designs, providing flexibility for next-generation AI servers.
Storage capacities range from 1.60 terabytes (TB) up to 61.44 TB, although available capacities vary depending on the selected form factor.
The drives are also offered with different endurance profiles to match varying enterprise workloads. Read-intensive models provide one drive write per day (1 DWPD), while mixed-use configurations support three drive writes per day (3 DWPD), allowing organizations to select storage optimized for their specific application requirements.
Support for Modern Enterprise Standards
The CM10 Series has been designed to comply with several leading enterprise storage standards.
The drives support PCIe® 6.0, NVMe™ 2.1, and major elements of the Open Compute Project (OCP) Datacenter NVMe SSD Specification v2.7.
Among the supported features is NVMe Flexible Data Placement (FDP), which helps improve SSD efficiency by optimizing how data is written and managed across flash memory. FDP can reduce write amplification, improve endurance, and enhance long-term storage performance in demanding enterprise environments.
By supporting these widely adopted industry standards, Kioxia enables easier integration of the CM10 Series into modern server platforms and cloud infrastructure.
Advanced Security Features
Security remains a key priority for enterprise storage deployments, particularly as organizations process increasingly sensitive business and AI data.
The CM10 Series incorporates multiple security technologies designed to protect stored information and meet evolving regulatory requirements.
Available security options include Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE), Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) functionality, planned support for FIPS 140-3-certified encryption, and Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) 1.4 attestation.
The drives are also designed to support post-quantum cryptography recommendations outlined in the Commercial National Security Algorithm (CNSA) 2.0 framework, helping organizations prepare for future cybersecurity challenges posed by advances in quantum computing.
These comprehensive security capabilities make the CM10 Series suitable for enterprise, government, financial, healthcare, and cloud environments where data protection is critical.
Currently Sampling to Customers
Kioxia confirmed that the CM10 Series is currently being sampled with selected customers for evaluation and system validation.
The company noted that the current engineering samples are intended for functionality testing and that final commercial specifications may be refined prior to mass production.
The new SSD family will also be showcased during FMS: The Future of Memory and Storage, taking place in Santa Clara, California, where Kioxia is expected to demonstrate the drives’ capabilities alongside its latest flash memory innovations.
Expanding Enterprise Storage Innovation
Kioxia continues to strengthen its position as one of the world’s leading developers of flash memory and solid-state storage technologies.
Since pioneering NAND flash memory through its predecessor Toshiba in 1987, the company has consistently advanced storage performance for enterprise computing, mobile devices, automotive systems, and cloud infrastructure.
Today, Kioxia’s proprietary BiCS FLASH™ architecture powers a broad portfolio of storage solutions supporting data centers, AI platforms, enterprise servers, industrial systems, and consumer electronics worldwide.
With the introduction of the PCIe® 6.0-based CM10 Series, Kioxia is reinforcing its commitment to enabling the next generation of AI infrastructure. By combining advanced 332-layer flash memory, industry-leading interface technology, liquid cooling support, and enterprise-grade security, the company is positioning its latest SSD platform to meet the rapidly evolving storage demands of modern artificial intelligence and large-scale enterprise computing.
Source link: https://www.businesswire.com/