Kioxia Optical SSDs for Data Centers
- Kioxia is developing an optical interface for its enterprise SSDs, showcasing the technology at this year's FMS.
- The demonstration featured Kioxia's CM7 enterprise SSD equipped with an optical interface.A Kyocera-developed PCIe card with on-board optics was installed in the server slot.
- The optical SSD demonstration indicated a slight decrease in IOPS performance.
Kioxia‘s innovative optical SSD interface could slash data center power consumption by up to 40%, a critical step toward greener technology.Unveiled at the FMS, this technology uses an optical interface on the CM7 enterprise SSD, enabling data transfer across distances up to 100 meters.This disaggregation of storage from processing units minimizes cooling demands, offering a leap forward in energy efficiency. The presentation showcased improved latency compared to copper network links,indicating superior signal integrity. While further industry standardization is necessary, the PCI-SIG optical workgroup is paving the way. News Directory 3 will continue to report on these breakthroughs. Discover what’s next as optical SSDs redefine data center design.
Kioxia Demos Optical SSD Interface for Green Data Centers
Updated May 30, 2025
Kioxia is developing an optical interface for its enterprise SSDs, showcasing the technology at this year’s FMS. This initiative supports the Japanese government’s push for green data center technologies, targeting significant reductions in power consumption.
The demonstration featured Kioxia’s CM7 enterprise SSD equipped with an optical interface.A Kyocera-developed PCIe card with on-board optics was installed in the server slot. This optical link enables data transfer over distances up to 100 meters, allowing storage to be housed separately from CPUs and GPUs, minimizing cooling needs. Disaggregation of server components may become more common as high-throughput interfaces like PCIe 7.0 become available.
The optical SSD demonstration indicated a slight decrease in IOPS performance. Though, it also showed a notable betterment in latency compared to a standard enterprise SSD using a copper network link. Optical links also offer advantages in wiring and signal integrity.
As this is a proof-of-concept, industry standardization is needed for widespread adoption among data center vendors. The PCI-SIG optical workgroup is working to create a standards-based approach to optical interfaces for SSDs.
What’s next
The advancement of standardized optical interfaces for SSDs could lead to more energy-efficient and flexible data center designs,reducing the environmental impact of data storage and processing.