Kioxia, a Japanese memory manufacturer, formerly the memory business of Toshiba, today announced the development and demonstration of a prototype of its new Kioxia CD9P Series PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs. These are the latest SSDs built with Kioxia’s 8th generation BiCS FLASH TLC-based 3D flash memory. BiCS FLASH features CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology, an architecture that the company claims ‘boosts power efficiency, performance, and storage density, while doubling the capacity available per SSD compared with the previous generation model.’
As GPU-accelerated AI servers drive up the demands on storage infrastructure, maintaining high throughput, low latency, and consistent performance is critical – including keeping GPUs highly utilised. Kioxia claims its CD9P Series is purpose-built for these environments and that it delivers the speed and responsiveness required by AI, machine learning, and high-performance computing workloads.
The CD9P Series leverages Kioxia’s 3D flash memory, featuring a CBA-based architecture that aims to reduce heat generation and enhance thermal management. The company says that the drives deliver 4-corner performance improvements of up to approximately 125% in random write, 30% in random read, 20% sequential read, and 25% in sequential write speeds compared to the previous generation. Furthermore, it claims that performance per watt of power consumption has improved by approximately 60% in sequential read, 45% in sequential write, 55% in random read, and 100% in random write – regarding the 15.36 terabyte model specifically.
Whilst preliminary and subject to change, some features of the Kioxia CD9P Series SSD include:
• PCIe 5.0, NVMe 2.0, NVMe-MI 1.2c compliant.
• Open Compute Project Datacenter NVMe SSD specification v2.5 support. (Not all requirements.)
• Form factors: 2.5-inch 15 mm thickness, EDSFF E3.S.
• Read-intensive (1 DWPD) and mixed-use (3 DWPD) endurances.
• Sequential performance (128 KiB/QD32) – 14.8 GB/s Read and 7 GB/s Write.
• Random performance (4KiB) – 2,600 KIOPS (QD512) Read and 750 KIOPS (QD32) Write.
• 2.5-inch capacities up to 61.44 TB and E3.S capacities up to 30.72 TB.
• CNSA 2.0 algorithm support.
“Achieving power efficiency, whilst addressing the increasing demand for all data processing challenges for AI, machine learning, or high-performance computing, is possibly the most pressing issue today and in the future,” argues Axel Stoermann, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Embedded Memory and SSD, Kioxia. “At Kioxia, we are already addressing this need by offering the CD9P Series, a leading power efficiency, high-performance solution delivering speed and responsiveness for high workloads and optimum operation.”
Kioxia CD9P Series SSDs are now sampling to select customers and will be showcased at HPE Discover 2025, taking place 23-26 June in Las Vegas, USA.
For more from Kioxia, click here.
