Kioxia Launches Industry’s First 24G SAS SSDs for Servers and Storage

New PM6 Series Delivers Fastest Available SAS SSD Performance for Business-Critical Applications

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The next generation of SAS has arrived, bringing improved performance, reliability and data protection along with it. Today, Kioxia Corporation became the first company^[1] to bring 24G SAS to server and storage applications with the introduction of its 6th generation enterprise SAS SSD family. First demonstrated at Flash Memory Summit 2019, Kioxia’s new PM6 series of enterprise SAS SSDs is built on 24G SAS technology, enabled by a PCIe^® 4.0 ecosystem. The PM6 series drives are now available for evaluation and qualification.

Designed for modern IT infrastructures, 24G SAS doubles the data throughput of its predecessor, while implementing new features and enhancements to reach new application performance levels. An established leader in developing SAS SSDs, Kioxia delivers new levels of SAS SSD sequential read performance and is the only SSD supplier to offer failure recovery in case 2 dies fail at the same time. The PM6 series builds upon this history of best-in-class performance and reliability over six generations of SAS drives.

Featuring Kioxia’s 96-layer BiCS FLASH™ 3D TLC flash memory, the PM6 series delivers industry-leading^[2] SAS SSD sequential read performance of up to 4,300MB/s (4,101MiB/s), which is more than a 2x improvement over the previous generation. Kioxia’s new drives are available in capacities up to 30.72TB^[3], making it the industry’s highest capacity^[4] 2.5-inch^[5] SAS SSD.^[6]

Key features include:

• Dual-port for high-availability
• Full range of endurance options for a wide variety of workloads: read-intensive (1 DWPD3), mixed-use (3 DWPD) and write-intensive (10 DWPD)
• Multistream write support to reduce write amplification and extend endurance
• Full suite of security options available^[7]: sanitize instant erase (SIE)^[8], TCG Enterprise self-encrypting drive (SED)^[9] and FIPS 140-2^[10] certification.

Notes
[1] As of June 16, 2020, in the category of enterprise SSDs. Kioxia Corporation survey.
[2] As of June 16, 2020, in the category of enterprise SAS SSDs. Kioxia Corporation survey.
[3] Definition of capacity: Kioxia Corporation defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1Gb = 2^30 bits = 1,073,741,824 bits, 1GB = 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes and 1TB = 2^40 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
[4] As of June 16, 2020, in the category of enterprise SAS SSDs. Kioxia Corporation survey.
[5] "2.5-inch" indicates the form factor of the SSD. It does not indicate the drive's physical size.
[6] Samples of 30.72TB products are scheduled to be available after August 2020.
[7] Availability of security/encryption options may vary by region.
[8] SIE: Sanitize Instant Erase option supports Crypto Erase, which is a standardized feature defined by the technical committees (T10) of INCITS (the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards).
[9] SED: Self-Encrypting Drive option supports TCG Enterprise SSC.
[10] FIPS: Federal Information Processing Standards drives are validated as FIPS 140-2 Level 2, which defines security requirements for cryptographic module by the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

* PCI Express and PCIe are registered trademarks of PCI-SIG.
* Company names, product names and service names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Related Links:
*The new PM6 Series and the line-up of Kioxia Enterprise SSDs
https://business.kioxia.com/en-jp/ssd/enterprise-ssd.html

*Information in this document, including product prices and specifications, content of services and contact information, is correct on the date of the announcement but is subject to change without prior notice.