Kioxia unveils CM10 enterprise SSD at FMS 2026, eyes 100M IOPS

Kioxia used FMS 2026, a major flash memory and storage event held in Santa Clara, to position flash storage as a core part of AI infrastructure rather than a peripheral component. In its keynote, Kioxia executives argued that flash memory can complement DRAM capacity, noting that many applications concentrate about 80% of accesses on roughly 20% of data, so placing frequently used data in flash can expand memory capacity cost-effectively. That framing supports the product direction on display: SSDs evolving along two axes, higher capacity and higher speed, across four directions to serve generative AI workloads from training to inference.

The product lineup reflects that push. The CM10 series is the first enterprise SSD to use Kioxia's 10th-generation BiCS FLASH with a 332-layer structure, and the NX1 series adopts the newer E1.S form factor for data-center PCIe 5.0 NVMe use. Kioxia also showed a UFS 5.0 embedded solution for AI-capable mobile and edge devices, and a 245.76 TB LC9 series SSD for large-scale dataset search. Its GP series, described as the industry's first SSD optimized for direct GPU access as of March 16, 2026 by Kioxia's own count, won the Best of Show Award in the Specialized Storage category.

The roadmap points beyond current performance. Kioxia says it demonstrated 10 million IOPS and is now developing toward a 100 million IOPS target for the PCIe 7.0 era, enabled by its XL-FLASH low-latency flash memory. The company also brought former Major League Baseball player Hunter Pence to its keynote and booth to illustrate how AI creates new opportunities, part of an event theme built around "game changers." Kioxia did not disclose pricing or availability dates for the new products.