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Home » News » KIOXIA CM10 Is Its First PCIe 6.0 Enterprise SSD, Aimed at NVIDIA CMX KV Cache

KIOXIA CM10 Is Its First PCIe 6.0 Enterprise SSD, Aimed at NVIDIA CMX KV Cache

by Lyle Smith<br>on July 31, 2026

Enterprise ◇<br>SSD

KIOXIA has introduced the CM10 Series, the company’s first PCIe 6.0 enterprise SSD and its first enterprise drive built on BiCS FLASH generation 10 TLC memory. The drives cover E3.S, E1.S, and 2.5-inch form factors, with capacities ranging from 1.60TB to 61.44TB and endurance options for both read-intensive and mixed-use workloads.

The PCIe 6.0 portion of the CM10 family includes E3.S drives with a 7.5mm thickness and E1.S models in 9.5mm and 15mm formats. These EDSFF versions use 332-layer BiCS FLASH generation 10 TLC memory, while the 15mm 2.5-inch model uses a PCIe 5.0 interface and BiCS FLASH generation 8 TLC memory.

All three form factors support NVMe 2.1 and the Open Compute Project Datacenter NVMe SSD Specification 2.7, although not all requirements in the OCP specification are supported. NVMe Flexible Data Placement is also included, allowing compatible hosts to organize data placement to reduce internal write amplification and improve flash utilization.

KIOXIA CM10 Targets AI Inference and KV Cache Workloads

The CM10 Series is aimed at enterprise and AI workloads, including AI inference and key-value cache. KIOXIA says the drives are designed to support the NVIDIA CMX context memory storage solution, which extends effective GPU memory with a shared, pod-level context tier optimized for ephemeral KV cache.

KIOXIA frames the demand in specific terms: as AI models scale to trillions of parameters and agentic AI context windows expand to millions of tokens, the need for high-performance KV cache storage grows accordingly. Moving part of that cache from GPU memory to high-speed flash gives infrastructure designers another tier for retaining context data without holding all of it in accelerator memory.

Compared with the previous CM9 Series, the CM10 is rated for up to approximately 92% higher sequential read performance and up to approximately 85% higher random read performance. As always, actual real-world performance will depend on the host platform, software, drivers, operating system, and workload conditions.

"As AI infrastructure evolves, storage must deliver not only higher performance but also greater efficiency and deployment flexibility," said Neville Ichhaporia, senior vice president and general manager of the SSD business unit at KIOXIA America. "The KIOXIA CM10 Series reflects our continued commitment to advancing flash storage that helps customers build more capable, scalable, and efficient AI infrastructure."

KIOXIA CM10 Series Specifications

Specification<br>EDSFF Models<br>2.5-inch Model

Interface and Form Factor

Interface<br>PCIe 6.0; NVMe 2.1 specification compliant<br>PCIe 5.0; NVMe 2.1 specification compliant

OCP support<br>OCP Datacenter NVMe SSD Specification v2.7 support; not all requirements are supported<br>OCP Datacenter NVMe SSD Specification v2.7 support; not all requirements are supported

NVMe Flexible Data Placement<br>Supported<br>Supported

Form factor<br>E3.S, 7.5 mm thickness

E1.S, 9.5 mm or 15 mm thickness<br>2.5-inch, 15 mm thickness

Capacity and endurance<br>Capacities from 1.60 TB to 61.44 TB across the CM10 Series, varying by form factor; read-intensive (1 DWPD) and mixed-use (3 DWPD) endurance options

Architecture and Data Protection

Architecture<br>KIOXIA controller and firmware with BiCS FLASH generation 10 TLC memory<br>KIOXIA controller and firmware with BiCS FLASH generation 8 TLC memory

High availability<br>Dual-port design on E3.S models only<br>Dual-port design

Data protection<br>Power loss protection and end-to-end data protection<br>Power loss protection and end-to-end data protection

Security options<br>SIE, SED, planned SED FIPS 140-3, post-quantum cryptography, CNSA 2.0, and SPDM 1.4 attestation support

Power and Cooling

Power states<br>Power states above 25W supported<br>Not specified

Cooling<br>Traditional air cooling supported on all EDSFF models

Direct cold-plate liquid cooling supported on E3.S and 9.5 mm E1.S models<br>Traditional air cooling supported

Power management<br>NVMe TP4199 Self-Reported Drive Power Support<br>NVMe TP4199 Self-Reported Drive Power Support

Direct Liquid Cooling for E3.S and E1.S

Direct cold-plate liquid cooling is supported by the E3.S and 9.5mm E1.S models, while every CM10 form factor can operate in a traditional air-cooled environment. The capability is not unique to this family: KIOXIA introduced its first liquid-cooled SSD a day before the CM10 with the E1.S NX1 Series, a PCIe 5.0 data center drive built on generation 8 memory.

The PCIe 6.0 EDSFF drives...