KIOXIA expands CM9 SSD series with liquid-cooled models for AI

KIOXIA has announced the expansion of its CM9 enterprise SSD series with new models designed for Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC). These E3.S form factor drives are engineered to support cold plate cooling in server designs while remaining compatible with traditional air-cooled environments.

The introduction of DLC-capable storage aims to address the increasing thermal demands and power consumption associated with high-density AI workloads. KIOXIA notes that DLC infrastructure can provide significant energy savings and allow for higher server density per rack compared to air cooling.

The new CM9-DLC models are positioned for applications such as SSD context caching to assist in managing memory demands in AI architectures. Technical specifications include PCIe 5.0 and NVMe 2.0 compliance, with capacities reaching up to 30.72 TB for read-intensive use cases (1 DWPD) and 25.6 TB for mixed-use scenarios (3 DWPD).