Kioxia Sampling Enterprise CM9 Series PCIe 5.0 NVMe Up to 61.44TB 2.5-Inch and E3.S SSD

Kioxia America, Inc. announced the development and prototype demonstration of its new CM9 Series PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs. These next-gen drives are the 1st enterprise SSDs built with Kioxia’s 8^th Gen BiCS FLASH TLC–based 3D flash memory ⁽¹⁾, which incorporates CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology – an architectural innovation that delivers significant advances in power efficiency, performance and density, while doubling available capacity ⁽²⁾ per flash device.

As the demands of modern computing intensify, applications such as AI, ML, and HPC require a sophisticated solid state storage infrastructure – requiring not only enterprise-class performance but also higher power efficiency to ensure scalability and manageable operational costs. Addressing these requirements is central to the design of the company’s CM9 Series, which is purpose-built to support next-gen data center workloads.

At the core of the CM9 Series is Kioxia’s 8^th Gen BiCS FLASH, the company’s most advanced 3D flash memory to date. This technology employs a CBA-based architecture that significantly increases the NAND interface speed, enhances density and power efficiency and lowers latency – directly benefitting SSD performance.

The CM9 Series drives deliver performance improvements of up to approximately 65% in random write, 55% in random read, and 95% in sequential write compared to the previous-gen. In addition, performance/watt gains realized include 55% better sequential read and 75% better sequential write efficiency.

Kioxia CM9 Series SSD highlights include (preliminary and subject to change):

PCIe 5.0, NVMe 2.0, NVMe-MI 1.2c, and OCP Datacenter NVMe SSD 2.5 specification-compliant
Dual-port support in 2.5-inch and E3.S SSD form factors
Read-intensive (1 DWPD) and mixed-use (3 DWPD) endurances
Sequential performance (128KB/QD32) – 14.8GB/s read and 11GB/swrite
Random performance (4KB) – 3,400 KIOs (QD512) and 800 KIOs (QD32)
2.5-inch capacities up to 61.44TB and E3.S capacities up to 30.72TB

“We are proud to integrate the latest BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology into our enterprise SSDs, bringing enhanced performance and power efficiency to AI-centric workloads,” said Neville Ichhaporia, SVP and GM, SSD business unit, Kioxia America. “As AI models grow in complexity and scale, the need for storage solutions that can sustain high throughput and low latency, and allow for better thermal efficiency, becomes critical. With the addition of the CM9 Series, Kioxia is enabling more efficient scaling of AI operations while helping to reduce power consumption and total cost of ownership across data center environments.”

Kioxia CM9 Series SSDs are sampling to select customers and will be showcased at Dell Technologies World, taking place May 19 – 22 in Las Vegas, NV, USA.

⁽¹⁾ As of May 15, 2025. Source: Kioxia Corporation.
⁽²⁾ Compared to the previous-gen.