Kioxia America is showcasing a prototype broadband SSD with an optical interface for next-generation data centers, at this week’s Future of Memory and Storage (FMC) conference in Santa Clara, California.
In the demo a board-level component interfaces to a PCIe cable and then carries the PCIe signal across the optical link to the SSD. By replacing the electrical wiring interface with an optical one, the alternative technology is said to allow greater physical distance between compute and storage devices; 40 meters (circa 131 feet) at present. Kioxia has a 100 meter length in its roadmap. Along with slimming down the wiring, the new option is also expected to deliver “high flexibility to data center system designs and applications,” according to Kioxia. Additionally, energy efficiency and “high signal quality” is being promised.
By adopting an optical interface, it becomes possible to aggregate individual components that make up systems, such as SSDs and CPUs. “This furthers the evolution of a disaggregated computing system that can efficiently utilize resources according to a specific workload,” says Kioxia. SSDS could be located in cooler environments than hot server rack areas.
The optical interface may also enhance high-performance computing (HPC) environments.
Kioxia foresees using an optical link for future PCIe gen 5, gen 6, 7 and 8 SSDs. It also envisages using optical switching to extend the host-SSD distance further and enable disaggregation.
The showcased technology at FMC is the result of the Japanese Next Generation Green Data Center Technology Development Project, which is funded by that country’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
As part of the project, new technologies are being developed with the goal of achieving more than 40 percent in energy savings when compared to current datacenters in operation.
Kioxia America is a subsidiary of Kioxia Corporation, the worldwide supplier of flash memory and solid-state drives. Kioxia is rumored to be preparing an IPO to recapitalize itself after paying off debts, but has not confirmed this.
Last month, Kioxia said it was sample shipping 2 terabit NAND chips, the highest capacity NAND chips currently available. Pure Storage, for instance, was said to be queueing up to buy them for its own storage product portfolio. The new shipped chips have a QLC (4bits/cell) design and use Kioxia’s BiCS 8 218-layer flash node architecture.
