PCIe 5.0 SSDs target cloud and hyperscale environments

KIOXIA Europe GmbH has made available its latest KIOXIA XD8 Series PCIe 5.0 Enterprise and Datacentre Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E1.S SSDs.

The new drives are the third generation of E1.S SSDs from KIOXIA and are compliant with PCIe 5.0 (32 GT/s x 4) and NVMe 2.0 specifications, and support the Open Compute Project (OCP) Datacentre NVMe SSD v2.5 specification.

Designed for cloud and hyperscale environments, the new SSDs meet the growing demand for higher performance, enhanced efficiency, and greater scalability in data centres. The new drives empower cloud providers and hyperscalers to optimise their infrastructure, delivering superior performance while maintaining operational efficiency.

“We leverage new technologies and standards for SSDs, like PCIe 5.0 and the E1.S form factor, and support the OCP Datacentre NVMe SSD specification V2.5 specification,” said Pablo Ziperovich, GM, Azure Memory & Storage Centre of Excellence (AMS CoE), Microsoft Corporation. “These latest SSDs, like KIOXIA’s XD8 drives, provide the high density, lower power, high performance and serviceability that are required by Microsoft data centres.”

Key benefits of the SSDs include:

• Additional NVMe support, which includes NVM Express Management Interface (NVMe-MI) v1.2c.
• Sequential read performance up to 12,500 gigabytes per second (a 73% improvement over the previous generation).
• Sequential write performance up to 5,800 megabytes per second (a 20% improvement over the previous generation).
• Random Read performance of 2,300 K Input Output Per Second (IOPS) (a 48% improvement).
• Random write performance up to 250 K IOPS (a 25% improvement).
• EDSFF E1.S with 9.5-mm, 15-mm and 25-mm heat sink options.
• KIOXIA designed SSD controller, BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and firmware.
• Non-SED and TCG Opal SSC SED options.
• Full end-to-end data protection, power loss protection.

“The XD8 Series of SSDs is designed to provide outstanding performance and thermal management, meeting the requirements of contemporary cloud and hyperscale environments,” remarked Paul Rowan, VP & CMO of the Memory and SSD Business Units at KIOXIA Europe GmbH. “As a proactive participant in the development of the new EDSFF E1 and E3 form factors, KIOXIA is dedicated to working in concert with leading server and storage system developers to fully exploit the capabilities of flash memory, NVMe, and PCIe technologies. Our ongoing innovation in this field ensures that the industry is well-equipped to address both present and future challenges.”