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Micron Unveils World's First PCIe 6.0 SSD
17 Feb
Summary
- Micron's 9650 NVMe SSD is the first PCIe 6.0 drive in mass production.
- The drive targets hyperscalers and AI data centers for faster data access.
- It offers up to 28,000MB/s sequential read speeds, doubling PCIe 5.0 bandwidth.
Micron has officially entered mass production with its 9650 NVMe SSD, marking a significant milestone as the first PCIe 6.0 SSD available. This advanced storage solution is specifically engineered for hyperscale and large-scale AI data center operators, catering to the increasing demands of AI inference workloads. The drive's primary advantage lies in its ability to provide faster and more consistent data access, crucial for applications leveraging retrieval-augmented generation and large context windows.
The PCIe 6.0 interface effectively doubles the bandwidth compared to its predecessor, PCIe 5.0. The Micron 9650 capitalizes on this, achieving sequential read speeds of up to 28,000MB/s and sequential write speeds of 14,000MB/s. It also boasts impressive random performance, with 5.5 million IOPS for reads and 900,000 IOPS for writes. This heightened performance is designed to reduce CPU involvement and eliminate transfer bottlenecks by enabling data to move more directly between storage and accelerators.
Beyond raw speed, power efficiency is a key consideration for the 9650. Micron states it offers superior performance per watt compared to PCIe 5.0 drives, approximately doubling sequential read efficiency at similar power levels. This allows data centers to boost useful work without exceeding their existing power envelopes. Furthermore, the drive is designed to handle the increased cooling requirements associated with high-performance storage and GPUs, supporting both air-cooled and liquid-cooled configurations.
Micron dedicated approximately 18 months to validating PCIe 6.0 ecosystem interoperability, conducting extensive tests with various hardware components. The company has previously showcased the drive at industry events, demonstrating its integration within complete systems. With mass production underway and ongoing tests with hardware partners and AI data center clients, the Micron 9650 represents a substantial advancement for PCIe 6.0 storage solutions aimed at AI inference systems.
