Kioxia Pioneers Broadband Optical SSD Tech For Greener Next-Gen Data Centers
Kioxia envisions these SSDs as being pivotal in next generation data centers being built with energy efficiency as a high priority. The optical interface enables far greater distances between the SSD and the system it’s connected to. This will allow data center operators to place separate components and subsystems of a data center system in different rooms or floors, if it's more optimal, to minimize the amount of energy needed to keep these components cool.
Moreover, these SSDs will also bring improvements in more simplified wiring. In addition, thanks to the elimination of the electromagnetic interference, “the optical interface may enhance High-Performance Compute environments, such as in supercomputers, cloud based-HPC and even applications in outer space.”
Optical connectors will also offer the benefit of a much more compact form factor than those found in standard 2.5” SSDs, in addition to paving the way to higher data rate speeds. Regardless, breakthroughs such as this are critical for a more sustainable future of compute resources. Data centers have started to become vast consumers of energy, thanks in part to the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence that doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Anything that can be done to counterbalance this ever increasing energy demand will go a long way for both the environment and the grid infrastructure used to deliver that energy.
It will still be some time before Kioxia’s breakthrough SSDs become available. The company expects this technology as being deployed sometime around when PCI express 6.0 SSDs enter the market sometime in 2025. In tandem, Intel and others have been aggressively developing silicon photonics-based optical chip-to-to chip interfaces as well.
