Optical SSDs Enable Storage At Extreme Distance

Japanese memory manufacturer Kioxia had an intriguing demo on show at Computex this year, in a next-generation “Optical” SSD design. These drives utilize light, rather than electricity, to transfer data between the drive and host system, offering greater signal integrity in the process. That makes it possible to run the connecting cable at up to 30 meters, potentially allowing SSDs to operate at extreme distances from their host system. This could be advantageous for datacenter designs, enabling more efficient drive installations and easing maintenance.
Although NVMe PCIe 5 SSDs are the pinnacle of consumer performance and technology in the storage space (until PCIe 6 drives go mainstream), enterprises have different wants and needs. Kioxia is betting that one aspect of SSDs it can improve is their versatility, by enabling riser-cable-like connections that make it possible to run an SSD at a great distance from the system it’s connected to. It doesn’t affect performance, but that performance is at least maintained, despite the potential for additional latency over extended cable runs.
Paired with a Kyocera SSD, Kioxia’s optical control board converts the SSD’s signal from electrical to optical and then transmits it down an optical cable. Tom’s Hardware reports that it saw no degradation in performance, despite distances of up to 30m between the drive and the server it was connected to.
Kioxia confirmed this is still early days for the technology and that it has plans to miniaturize the current PCB of electronics that performs the conversion to the point that it fits inside a standard enterprise SSD chassis. No word yet if it plans to get it down to NVMe size, but it suggests that the end result will be a slim and flexible connector design with no additional boards required.
And the company said SSDs aren’t the only potential application for this technology. It even claims that RAM could be managed in a similar fashion. The cabling has a reported maximum bandwidth of 512Gbps, so it would be pushed to its limits by some of the fastest DDR5 kits out there. But RAM on a riser could at least unlock some unique DIY desktop builds.
In more likely applications of the technology, though, Kioxia could enable more efficient data center or server designs. If the SSDs don’t have to connect to the motherboard directly, they could be stored in a more serviceable location for easier drive swapping, cooling, or maintenance. Indeed, Kioxia’s pitch is to have SSDs stored in a separate facility designed specifically for storage.
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