Micron Technology has unveiled a new lineup of high-performance SSDs designed to meet the growing demand of AI data centers. Built on Micron’s NAND9 architecture, the lineup includes the 9650 PCIe Gen6 data center SSD, alongside the high-capacity 6600 ION SSD and the 7600 Gen5 SSD for mainstream data center workloads.
Targeting high-throughput, low-latency AI workloads, the Micron 9650 SSD can support up to 28 GBps sequential read and 14 GBps sequential write speeds, along with 5.5 million IOPS for random reads and 900,000 IOPS for random writes. Micron claims the SSD is FIPS 140-3 Level 2 and Trade Agreements Act (TAA) compliant, making it suitable for US government deployments. For dense, high-performance server environments, a liquid-cooled E1.S version is also available.
During inference, high throughput and ultralow latency are essential to enable real-time data access for large models, such as enterprise agents with extended context windows and retrieval-augmented generation pipelines. The 9650 offers superior performance per watt compared to Gen5 SSDs, achieving up to 25% and 67% better storage energy efficiency for random writes and reads, respectively, the company claimed.
PCIe Gen6: Designed for Next-Gen AI Performance
PCIe 6.0, also known as PCI Express 6.0, is the latest generation of the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) standard that doubles the bandwidth and power efficiency of the PCIe 5.0 specification.
“The PCIe Gen 6 doubles the data transfer rate to 64 GBps per lane, leading to a potential 128 GBps bi-directional bandwidth for a 16-lane (x16) configuration. It utilizes Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) signaling instead of the traditional Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) signaling used in Gen 5, which allows for more data to be transmitted per clock cycle, further contributing to enhancing bandwidth and speed,” said Danish Faruqui, CEO at Fab Economics. As PCIe Gen 6 can more efficiently feed data to AI accelerators and GPUs, this can lead to quicker model training cycles and more responsive inference performance.
“Efficiency improvement in PCIe Gen 6 over 5 is due to the introduction of fixed-length data packets called FLITs that simplify data management and improve bandwidth efficiency and FEC to enhance data integrity and reliability by correcting errors at the receiver without adding significant latency,” he added. PCIe Gen6 introduces a new L0p power state, enabling dynamic bandwidth scaling and reduced power consumption, particularly beneficial for data centers seeking to optimize energy usage.
Competitive positioning
With the launch of the 9650 SSD PCIe Gen 6, Micron competes with Samsung and SK Hynix enterprise SSD offerings, which are the dominant players in the SSD market. In December last year, SK Hynix announced the development of PS1012 U.2 Gen5 PCIe SSD, for massive high-capacity storage for AI data centers. The PM1743 is Samsung’s PCIe Gen5 offering in the market, with 14,000 MBps sequential read, designed for high-performance enterprise workloads.
According to Faruqui, PCIe Gen6 data center SSDs are best suited for AI inference performance enhancement. However, we’re still months away from large-scale adoption as no current CPU platforms are available with PCIe 6.0 support.
Only Nvidia’s Blackwell-based GPUs have native PCIe 6.0 x16 support with interoperability tests in progress. He added that PCIe Gen 6 SSDs will see very delayed adoption in the PC segment and imminent 2025 2H adoption in AI, data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), and enterprise storage solutions.
Micron has also introduced two additional SSDs alongside the 9650. The 6600 ION SSD delivers 122TB in an E3.S form factor and is targeted at hyperscale and enterprise data centers looking to consolidate server infrastructure and build large AI data lakes. A 245TB variant is on the roadmap. The 7600 PCIe Gen5 SSD, meanwhile, is aimed at mixed workloads that require lower latency.
Source:: Network World