Kioxia’s new PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSD said to get to 14 GB/s and 2.5 million IOPS

Kioxia unveiled a new enterprise SSD at the China Flash Market Summit (CFMS 2021) that features PCI Express 5.0. An initial prototype relies on a 16-channel controller and comes with a read speed of 14 GB/s, according to initial projections.

Doubled performance compared to PCIe 4.0

Compared to the PCIe 4.0 standard, PCIe 5.0 should be able to achieve double the data speed. Accordingly, SSDs with PCIe 5.0 x4 can expect more than 14 GB/s at peak. This is what memory specialist Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) has promised for the upcoming enterprise SSDs.

The company’s own CM6 series with PCIe 4.0 is currently the manufacturer’s spearhead and reaches up to 6,900 MB/s for reading and 4,200 MB/s for writing. According to the manufacturer, the first PCIe 5.0 prototypes already reach 14,000 MB/s for reading and 7,000 MB/s for writing. In 4K random read, the model achieves a full 2.5 million IOPS compared to 1.4 million IOPS for the CM6 series. At the same time, the read and write latencies are also said to have been significantly reduced.

As can be seen from a translation of the magazine EETimes China, Kioxia is planning different variants of the PCIe 5.0 SSD, namely with an 8- or 16-channel controller. The stated values refer to the model with 16 channels. The MV-SS1331 and MV-SS1333 variants from Marvell will probably be used as PCIe 5.0 controllers. Models with a capacity between 1.6 TB and 30 TB are to be offered.

The models of the CD7 series also appear with PCIe 4.0 connection and achieve sequential transfer rates of 6,650 MB/s read and 5,600 MB/s write there. Variants from 960 GB to 15 TB are to be offered here.

Price and availability

Kioxia has not yet commented on pricing for the CD7 series with PCIe 5.0 support. However, several sources indicate that corresponding enterprise SSDs are to be launched as early as Q4 2021.