Kioxia has announced the CM10 series, a new lineup of enterprise solid state drives conforming to the PCIe 6.0 standard. These high capacity drives offer up to 61.44 TB of storage and are designed to handle demanding AI workloads in data centers. However, full retail availability has not been established as the company is currently shipping samples to select partners.
The hardware comes in E3.S, E1.S, and 2.5 inch form factors to fit modern server setups. Both the E3.S and E1.S models measure 9.5 millimeters thick and can run on direct liquid cooling or traditional air cooling systems. Storage capacities start at 1.6 TB and scale up to the maximum 61.44 TB option. Buyers can select read intensive models rated for 1 complete drive write per day, or mixed use models built for 3 complete drive writes per day.
At the core of the drive is the latest BiCS FLASH 10 memory technology. Kioxia claims this tenth generation TLC flash memory vastly improves both read speeds and power efficiency. Compared to the older CM9 generation, sequential read speeds have increased by up to 92% and random reads have improved by up to 85%. The drives also incorporate Nvidia CMX architecture, which allows servers to use the flash memory to store massive AI models with trillions of parameters directly.
Protocol support includes NVMe 2.1 alongside NVMe Flexible Data Placement to manage storage efficiency. On the security front, Kioxia integrated self encrypting technology, FIPS 140 3 standards, and SPDM 1.4 attestation. To prepare for future threats, the drives also implement post quantum cryptography recommended by the CNSA 2.0 guidelines. Select enterprise clients are currently evaluating early samples, with a broader industry debut planned for the upcoming FMS event.
