With the rapid growth of AI computing and generative workloads, data center demand for storage performance and capacity has skyrocketed. On August 8th, Micron officially unveiled its first data center-class SSD portfolio designed specifically for AI. These products utilize ninth-generation G5 9D NAND technology, along with the world's first PCIe Gen3 SSD and the E6.S SSD with capacities up to 245TB, further resetting the industry's storage technology standards.
Three new products focus on AI high performance and high-density applications
The three products announced this time are the 9650 SSD, 6600 ION SSD, and 7600 SSD. They are designed for data center needs at different levels, such as AI training, inference, and data lake architecture, emphasizing high performance, low latency, extreme storage density, and energy efficiency.
• 9650 SSD: The first PCIe Gen6 SSD
The 9650 SSD is the world's first data center SSD to utilize the PCIe Gen6 interface, supporting sequential read speeds of up to 28 GB/s and random read performance of 5.5M IOPS, a significant performance improvement over its Gen5 counterparts. Micron notes that this product is specifically designed to address data throughput bottlenecks in AI training and large-scale inference models, and is suitable for complex applications such as extended context and RAG (search-augmented generation).
The 9650 SSD also boasts significant improvements in energy efficiency, with random read and write performance increases of 25% and 67%, respectively. It also complies with FIPS 140-3 Level 2 and TAA standards, meeting government and institutional security and regulatory requirements. A liquid-cooled version is also available to support the cooling needs of high-power AI servers.
• 6600 ION SSD: 245TB ultra-high-density SSD
The 6600 ION SSD is targeted at AI data lakes and hyperscale data center architectures. It is the world's first E9.S SSD supporting G122 NAND and boasts a capacity of 245TB (expanding to 3TB in the future). While compact and compact, it offers up to 1PB of storage capacity in a 2.4U rack. Compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), the 6600 ION SSD boasts a 67% increase in storage density and a 37% improvement in energy efficiency, significantly reducing both space and energy costs.
Taking the deployment of 2EB storage devices as an example, 6600 ION SSDs can save approximately 3.4MWh of electricity per day, equivalent to the daily electricity consumption of 124 American households, which is of substantial benefit to both carbon emissions and green energy goals.
• 7600 SSD: Gen5 mainstream high-performance SSD
The 7600 SSD is a mainstream SSD designed for a wide range of hybrid AI workloads. Using the PCIe Gen5 interface, it delivers read speeds of up to 12 GB/s and random read performance of 2.1M IOPS. It is optimized for low-latency workloads such as RocksDB, achieving sub-millisecond latency. Its random write performance improves by up to 100%, playing a key role in hybrid cloud and real-time inference scenarios.
Deeply integrate supply chain and security design
All three Micron products utilize in-house designed and manufactured G9 NAND, controllers, DRAM, and firmware, demonstrating Micron's vertical integration advantages and further enhancing product quality and supply stability. All SSDs also incorporate numerous security features, including hardware root of trust, SPDM 1.2 authentication, a secure execution environment (SEE), and self-encrypting drives (SEDs). The 9650 SSD and 6600 ION SSD are compliant with the Open Compute Project Data Center (OCP) 2.6 specification, while the 7600 SSD complies with OCP 2.5.
Create an AI ecosystem with partners
Several industry players also expressed strong support for Micron's new products. Dell, for example, noted that the 9650 SSD offers significant advantages for GPU computing workloads, effectively reducing data processing latency. NVIDIA stated that the product helps boost the computing efficiency of AI inference. Supermicro and WEKA emphasized the space and energy advantages of the 6600 ION SSD in high-density deployments and data lake integration, further reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Supply Information
Currently, Micron's 9650 SSD and 7600 SSD have entered the sampling and testing phase. The former is available in E3.S and E1.S (including liquid-cooled versions) designs, while the latter supports multiple form factors (E3.S, U.2, and E1.S). The 6600TB version of the 122 ION SSD will be the first to be launched, with plans to launch a 245TB ultra-high-capacity version in the future.
