Kioxia CD8 Series: New PCIe 5.0 SSDs for Data Centers unveiled

With the Kioxia CD8 series, the company has introduced the second generation of SSDs with PCIe 5.0 interface technology. Optimized for hyperscale data centers and enterprise server-based workloads, the new CD8 Series NVMe data center SSDs use PCIe 5.0 interface technology, which doubles bandwidth over PCIe 4.0 from 16 to 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s).

Kioxia CD8 Series for Data Centers

Based on Kioxia’s fifth-generation BiCS-FLASH 3D flash memory technology, the CD8 series uses a proprietary controller and firmware that can be customized to meet customer needs.

In doing so, technology is housed in a 2.5-inch form factor case that comes in at a height of 15mm. The Kioxia CD8 series also complies with the Open Compute Project (OCP) PCIe 5.0, Datacenter NVMe SSD 2.0 and NVMe 1.4 specifications and is particularly suitable for high-performance computing, AI applications, caching layers and financial trading and analytics.

Offered in capacities from 960GB to 15.36TB for use in hyperscale and server-centric workloads, the drives are available as 1DWPD continuous-performance models, as well as mixed-use 3DWPD continuous-performance models with capacities from 800GB to 12.8TB. Up to 1.25 million random read IOPS and a sequential read throughput of 7.2 GB/s are realized, according to the manufacturer.

Compared to the 1DWPD model with the previous generation CD7 series, that represents an improvement of about 14 percent. Security options include Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE) and Self-Encrypted Drive (SED). The Kioxia CD8 series is available immediately for end customers, but the manufacturer does not provide details on pricing. So far, the data center SSDs are also not yet listed in online stores.