The Next Generation Family of SSD Form Factors is Spelled EDSFF

What happens when you get a group of industry leading companies working together to address data center flash storage issues? You get new specifications and form factors poised to deliver advantages over existing SSD form factors in capacity, scalability, performance, serviceability, manageability, thermal and power management. One of those is EDSFF. That’s Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor – and it’s the future of flash storage for servers in cloud and hyperscale data centers.

Of course, at KIOXIA we are known for leading the way forward and pushing the limits of flash storage - so the future is now. Our E1.S form factor XD6 Series SSDs were the first^[1] EDSFF E1.S SSDs to address the specific requirements of hyperscale applications, including the performance, power and thermal requirements of the Open Compute Platform (OCP) NVMe^™ Cloud SSD Specification.  We announced production-ready availability on November 8, 2021.

As defined by the SNIA SFF Technology Affiliate Technical Work Group (SFF TA TWG) and leveraging the OCP NVMe Cloud SSD Specification, the flexible, efficient, small form factor E1.S replaces the M.2 form factor and delivers greater density, performance, reliability, and thermal management. E1.S is also designed to be hot-pluggable for increased serviceability, which is another benefit over M.2.

We were first to announce an EDSFF E3.S SSD designed with PCIe^® 5.0 technology, called the CD7 Series, also on November 8^th.  E3.S is expected to start replacing 2.5-inch form factor SSDs in enterprise servers and storage, beginning the transition in 2022.  This “flash chip friendly” family of form factors also addresses the requirements of some hyperscale applications.

Ready to learn more about the future of data center architectures? Our new infographic is a great starting point, and it includes a look at the evolution of NVMe SSDs. Additionally, here is an E3 white paper we created with the help of engineers from Dell and HPE.  With a focus on carrying NVMe into the PCIe 5.0 age and beyond, we’re working hard to deliver higher density and performance - and enable a breakthrough for the next era of data centers. Stay tuned!

Notes:

1: Based on a survey of publicly available information as of November 3, 2020

PCI Express and PCIe are registered trademarks of PCI-SIG.

NVM Express and NVMe are trademarks of NVM Express, Inc.

“2.5-inch" indicates the form factor of the SSD and not its physical size.

All company names, product names and service names may be trademarks of their respective companies.