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I personally think we lose out on some of the best in North American retail and my visit to KIOXIA at Computex 2025 this morning proved correct. I might compound this belief with mention that KIOXIA (formerly Toshiba) is technically the inventor of flash NAND way back in 1987. KIOXIA, while being a very strong enterprise and data center resource in North America, maintains their consumer focus in the Asias and Europe. So you are in for just a taste of what we are missing I guess.
On the consumer side, KIOXIA has an Exceria Pro G2 Gen5 SSD on display that has very little information but for the fact that it will attain 14GB/s read data throughput. In speaking with our KIOXIA rep, he stated that there might be a number of products that are still under development and can not be elaborated upon. This was one. He did state, as expected, that we would find KIOXIA BiCS 8 3D TLC NAND flash memory on release and we did get him to nod ‘yes’ when we asked if it could be believed that write speeds would reach 13GB/s and that this would be a lower power solution than initial SSD release.
Kioxia’s present offering is the Exceria Plus G4 Gen5 SSD and this SSD is based on the Phison E31T SSD controller along with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory. This is a one-sided DRAMless low power SSD that will reach speeds of 10GB/s read and 9GB/s write.
Next up, we wanted to throw in something so many overlook these days, a SATA 3 2.5″ SSD. It is the KIOXIA Exceria, available in 240, 480 and 960GB and capable of speeds up to 555MB/s read and 540MB/s write. This exact SATA 3 SSD is where we all started in the flash industry some 17 years ago and it is still widely used. Would you believe that this SSD still holds a 30% market share?
There is a reason for this and it is not simply that it lasts. It is the disk access time of the SSD compared to the hard drive. The disk access of an SSD can typically be .02ms, whereas that increases as much as 100x for the hard drive. This because a massive visible performance improvement for PC users when moving from HDD to SSD.
Next up is the KIOXIA XG8 which has been a very successful client SSD for some time. It is available in capacities up to 4TB and is a Gen4 SSD capable of speeds up to 7GB/s read and 5.8GB/s write with just under 1 million IOPS. This SSD is pure KIOXIA with its proprietary KIOXIA TC58NC0L1XGSD Gen4 SSD controller and KIOXIA BiCS5 TLC NAND flash memory. Would you believe we reviewed this client SSD back in 2022?
On the enterprise side, KIOXIA is getting ready to launch its new SSD, the CM9 Gen5 SSD.
We posted a bit of info on the CM9 a few days back so this is a bit of a refresh and some first hand pictures. The CM9 is KIOXIA’s first enterprise solution to be using BiCS 8 TLC NAND flash memory with CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) which will assist with AI, machine learning, and high-performance computing which require a sophisticated solid state storage infrastructure. This SSD is capable of 14.8GB/s read and 11GB/s write data throughput. Drive capacity will be up to 6..44TB for the 2.5″ and 30.72TB for the E3.S form factor.
KIOXIA demonstrated their latest KIOXIA Optical SSD Technology where light is used for the transfer of data through fiber optic cables instead of electricity. This design enables a longer distance between storage and the host system, separating the two which enables more flexibility in data center design.
This live demonstration showed just how similar conventional and optical SSD transfer actually was.
The KIOXIA CM7 had the honours for this demonstration and one can see the blue optical cable connected at the bottom right of the picture. Regardless the distance between storage and the host system, the SSD is recognized by the system as a host device. Power efficiency is accomplished through different cooling requirements in the server or CPU room in comparison to a separate room for SSDs.
This is perhaps one of the most stunning things to see, and hardest to get your hands on in person. It was right there on the front counter and yes, thoughts of walking away with it were front and center. The NAND wafer. To understand the process of how a silicon ingot is grown until it becomes a NAND wafer is an amazing process. Hint Hint KIOXIA!
Lastly, we were rather amused with our visit as I had suggested we go early to get some pictures right off. We were lucky…very lucky to get in at 10am because this is what occurred a few minues later. The KIOXIA display was packed! Great show Kioxia!