KIOXIA America has collaborated with Ampere to qualify its CD6, CM6 and XD6 Series data center SSDs with platforms based on Ampere’s Altra and Ampere Altra Max Cloud Native Processors. Certification testing was conducted by Ampere to ensure the compatibility and performance of KIOXIA SSDs.
According to KIOXIA, Arm-based servers are now being used for the most demanding data center workloads, making it crucial that the SSDs installed inside of them are capable of handling the workloads. KIOXIA SSDs would not only handle today’s performance needs and latency sensitivity but also future business infrastructure requirements with one of the most comprehensive SSD product portfolios for the data center.
Ampere has created an entirely new server microprocessor architecture to meet the demands of the contemporary cloud. With an emphasis on today’s hyperscale cloud and edge computing workloads and applications, its AArch64-based processors would provide “performance, scalability, security, and power economy.”
“At Ampere, our customers want solutions that fit their needs, and this includes SSD options that offer PCIe 4.0 performance and new form factors, such as EDSFF E1.S,” said Sean Varley, Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Ampere. “We’ve worked with KIOXIA to certify their broad offering of NVMe SSDs with our Ampere Altra family of platforms for our mutual customers, including the top hyperscale cloud customers and leading ODM/OEM server manufacturers in the global IT market.”
KIOXIA CM6 and CD6 Series SSDs
The KIOXIA lineup of PCIe 4.0 (16 gigatransfers/s x4) NVMe SSDs would bring planned performance improvements of up to 2x over its PCIe 3.0 (8 gigatransfers/s x4) predecessors and is 12x faster than 6 gigabits/s SATA drives. KIOXIA CM6 enterprise and CD6 data center SSDs are SFF-TA-1001 conformant (also referred to as U.3) SSDs to support universal drive bay systems that can accept NVMe, SAS and SATA SSDs.
KIOXIA XD6 Series SSDs
Representing the latest innovation in flash storage for servers in cloud and hyperscale data centers, KIOXIA EDSFF E1.S SSDs are designed to optimize system density, efficiency and management. As defined by the EDSFF consortium and leveraging the Open Compute Project (OCP) NVMe Cloud SSD Specification, the small form factor E1.S would replace the M.2 form factor and deliver greater “density, performance, reliability, and thermal management.” E1.S is also designed to be hot swappable for increased serviceability, which can be seen as another benefit over M.2. The read intensive XD6 series utilizes KIOXIA BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and is compliant with NVMe 1.3c and PCIe 4.0 specifications.
“We are eager to work with server ecosystem companies like Ampere to bring cutting-edge solutions to cloud and enterprise data centers,” said Steve Weinger, Sr. Director Marketing, Business Development and Ecosystems, KIOXIA America. “KIOXIA is focused on ensuring that our SSDs work with industry-leading hardware and software products to meet customer expectations at a system level.”
