Kioxia new optical PCIe 5.0 SSDs can do 40-meter cable lengths with no performance loss

What just happened? Kioxia has completed the development of its next-gen optical PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which can operate up to 40 meters from the host system without losing throughput. The breakthrough comes from replacing traditional copper connections with optical communication, allowing the SSD to link directly to a server or CPU over long distances. The optical link supports much longer cable lengths and preserves the full multi-gigabyte-per-second speeds of PCIe 5.0. Kioxia has confirmed successful PCIe 5.0 32GT/s x4 lane operation over the optical interface, doubling the bandwidth of its previous prototype and marking a significant milestone for the project. The company developed these prototypes in collaboration with component makers AIOCore and Kyocera as part of a larger initiative to create more energy-efficient "green" data centers. This initiative, backed by Japan's NEDO under the Green Innovation Fund, aims to cut data center energy consumption by 40% or more. The project lever ... Read full article.