Kioxia KCD8XPUG1T92 CD8P-R & KCMYXVUG3T20 CM7-V PCIe 5.0 SSDs

While there is a growing number of PCIe 5.0 consumer NVMe SSDs available through Internet retailers, when it comes to PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD data center / enterprise grade solid-state drives there aren't as many yet and even for announced ones they have been relatively in short supply. In preparing for some upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS tests and ahead of next-gen servers arriving, I was recently searching for some new PCIe 5.0 data center solid state drives. Arriving so far are the Kioxia KCD8XPUG1T92 CD8P-R and Kioxia KCMYXVUG3T20 CM7-V PCIe 5 SSDs. Here are a few benchmarks of those drives for those curious about the performance.

With the Corsair MP700 series, Crucial T705, and other PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs on the market there are a number of readily-available drive M.2 consumer drive options for those craving speedy performance and don't mind the heat. Going back to the Inland PCIe 5.0 drive a year ago there is a growing number of options available. Over on the data center SSD side, there are fewer options currently available and even for drives announced months ago availability is tight at least among common Internet retailers.

When looking out for new PCIe 5.0 data center SSDs for use in my benchmark lab, it was a tough and lengthy search process as most listings for US Internet retailers ended up being out of stock or outright unavailable. I got lucky finding a KCD8XPUG1T92 CD8P-R from a US Internet retailer but even there was only able to purchase the 1.9TB version in stock even though would have much preferred the 3.8TB or 7.6TB models for their much higher performance. For the KCMYXVUG3T20 CM7-V drive I was unable to find it in-stock at any US retailer and ended up having to order it from Grooves Inc in Germany and then wait the two weeks for its arrival.

The Kioxia CD8P-R KCD8XPUG1T92 is a PCIe 5.0 data center drive focused on read-intensive workloads. The 1.9TB model is rated for 12k MB/s sequential reads, 3.5k MB/s sequential writes, 1600K random reads, and 150K random writes. With the 3.2/7.8TB models is where the CD8P-R performance is more compelling with 5.5k MB/s sequential writes (+2K), 1900~2000K IOPS random reads, and 200K IOPS random writes. Alas was unable to find the higher capacity CD8P-R models stocked anywhere. Topping out the CD8P-R series is also 15.3TB and 30.7TB models.

The rated power consumption of the KCD8XPUG1T92 is 18 Watts and with the U.3 form factor the heat dissipation is easier than with the M.2 consumer PCIe 5.0 SSDs. In March I was able to buy the 1.9TB Kioxia KCD8XPUG1T92 from Provantage for $349 USD but as of writing the listing there is no longer even present nor available from any other ready-to-ship US retailers.

The Kioxia CM7-V KCMYXVUG3T20 3.2TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe 2.0 drive is rated for 14k MB/s sequential reads, 3.75k MB/s sequential writes, 2700K IOPS random reads, and 600K random writes. Its active power consumption rating is 25 Watts while 5 Watts at idle. In March I was able to order the KCMYXVUG3T20 from Grooves for $1045 USD in-stock while as of writing it's out-of-stock and with a back-ordered price increase to $1172 USD.

Both of these Kioxia PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSDs are backed by a five year warranty and with a 2.5 million hour MTTF.

So availability on PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSDs is still tough if trying to just order small quantities outright from Internet retailers. For those curious about the performance of the Kioxia KCD8XPUG1T92 CD8P-R and KCMYXVUG3T20 CM7-V SSDs, I ran some benchmarks against some other PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs in the lab. SSD benchmarking/reviews isn't a major focus at Phoronix but in any case here are some numbers for those curious.

All of the testing was carried out on an AMD EPYC 8534P Siena 64-core server using the Cinnabar reference server with PCIe 5.0 connectivity and running Ubuntu 23.10 with the Linux 6.8 kernel. All SSDs were freshly formatted to using an EXT4 file-system.