Kioxia launches KV caching SSD and AI-focussed fingernail drive

Kioxia has launched the CM10 PCIe gen 6 SSD for AI inferencing and KV caching, offering up to 28.4 GBps sequential reads and 6.29 million random read IOPS, and a UFS 5.0 fingernail drive for edge AI with more than double the bandwidth of UFS 4.1. The CM10 supports Nvidia's CMX scheme and is available in air-cooled and liquid-cooled form factors, while the UFS 5.0 drive targets AI workloads on embedded and mobile devices.

Kioxia launches KV caching SSD and AI-focussed fingernail drive Kioxia has announced a super-fast SSD for AI inferencing and KV caching workloads plus a fingernail drive for edge AI. Speed is a crucial factor with both drives. The CM10 is a PCIe gen 6 drive, Kioxia’s first, with liquid-cooling options and follows on from the CM9 https://www.blocksandfiles.com/container-storage/2025/05/16/kioxia-teases-high-speed-ssd-aimed-at-ai-workloads/1601142 which used the PCIe gen 5 interconnect. It offers up to 28.4 GBps sequential read bandwidth and 6.29 million random read IOPS. Kioxia’s embedded UFS 5.0 https://www.blocksandfiles.com/glossary/2022/06/02/ufs/1613400 drive has more than twice the data transfer bandwidth of its existing UFS 4.1 product; with sequential read and write speeds increasing by up to 123 percent and 113 percent respectively over UFS 4.1 devices. Referencing the CM10, Kioxia America’s Neville Ichhaporia, SVP and GM of the SSD business unit, stated: "As AI infrastructure evolves, storage must deliver not only higher performance but also greater efficiency and deployment flexibility.” The CM10 is available in air-cooled E3.S, E1.S, and U.2, 2.5-inch form factors, with cold-plate liquid cooling capability in the E3.S and E1.S 9.5 mm form factors. It’s designed to support Nvidia’s CMX scheme to extend effective GPU memory with a shared, pod-level context tier optimized for ephemeral KV cache. The CM10 is made with BiCS gen 10 332-layer 3D NAND, but Kioxia does not specify whether it's TLC 3 bits/cell or some other format, and features; Capacities ranging from 1.60 TB to 61.44 varies by form factor , with read-intensive 1 DWPD and mixed-use 3 DWPD endurance options. PCIe 6.0, NVMe 2.1, and Open Compute Project OCP Datacenter NVMe SSD Specification 2.7 compliant, including support for NVMe Flexible Data Placement FDP . Security options include SIE, SED, SED FIPS 140-3 planned 7,8, post-quantum cryptography, CNSA 2.0, and SPDM 1.4 attestation support. We think that, like the CM9, the capacities will be up to 30.72 TB in the E3.S form factor and 61.44 TB in the U.2 one. We also understand it’s a dual-port drive and are checking these points with Kioxia. Micron and Samsung havre also announced PCIe gen 6 SSDs, both with TLC flash. Micron’s 9650 Pro and Max https://www.blocksandfiles.com/data-management/2025/07/30/micron-rolls-out-276-layer-ssd-trio-for-speed-scale-and-stability/1609384 are TLC drives with up to 28 GBps sequential read speed and 5.5 million random read IOPS. Samsung’s PM1763 https://www.blocksandfiles.com/ai-ml/2025/10/03/storage-news-ticker-october-3/1593477https://www.blocksandfiles.com/ai-ml/2025/10/03/storage-news-ticker-october-3/1593477 delivers up to 28.4 GBps sequential reads and 6.8 million random read IOPS. UFS 5.0 The UFS 5 drive’s high performance is enabled by the High-Speed Gear6, which achieves its interface speeds via new technologies such as PAM-4. The drive will support theoretical interface speeds of up to 46.6 Gb/s per lane and approximately 10.8 GB/s of effective dual-lane read/write performance. The drive uses Kioxia’s BiCS 8 218-layer 3D NAND and has an in-house controller. It comes in a 7.5 × 13 mm BGA package, smaller than the UFS 4.1 product and has better power efficiency and thermal management than previous products. Its available in 512 GB and 1 TB capacities and is intended to support AI inferencing style workloads on embedded and mobile smart devices. Kioxia is thinking of AI-enabled tablets, gaming systems, AR/VR devices, robotics, smart security cameras, and industrial edge applications that require fast local storage for data-intensive AI workloads. Maitry Dholakia, VP, Memory Business Unit, Kioxia America, said: "On-device AI is fundamentally changing storage requirements. As AI models become larger and more sophisticated, storage performance has become a critical enabler of overall system responsiveness. KIOXIA UFS 5.0 is designed to deliver the speed, efficiency and capacity needed to help customers unlock the next generation of AI-enabled mobile and edge devices." Both new drives will be demonstrated at the FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturememorystorage.com%2F&esheet=54578878&newsitemid=20260729429282&lan=en-US&anchor=FMS%3A+the+Future+of+Memory+and+Storage&index=2&md5=3efe7931efa721c373a37fc97bc08771 event in Santa Clara, CA, Aug 4-6. The two drives are sample shipping to selected customers. The UFS drive will start mass production by the end of the year. Bootnote Gear6 also called HS-Gear6, HS-G6, or High-Speed Gear 6 is a high-speed operating mode in the MIPI M-PHY physical layer used by Universal Flash Storage UFS . The UFS 5.0 standard JEDEC https://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/focus/flash/universal-flash-storage-ufs JESD220H relies on MIPI M-PHY version 6.0 for the physical layer and UniPro version 3.0 for the protocol layer. The Gear6 data rate is up to ~46.6 Gb/s or 46.7 Gb/s in some references per lane, using PAM-4 signaling. This roughly doubles the previous maximum from HS-Gear5 in UFS 4.0 which topped out around 23.2 Gb/s per lane .