- Micron 9650 SSD reaches 28 GB/S but it’s strictly for data centers, not consumers
- Liquid cooling in SSDs is no longer hypothetical, and micron just made it standard
- 7600 SSD delivers Ultra-low latency, yet it still depends on how work loads behave in reality
Micron has introduced what it describes as “the world’s first PCIE Gen6 data center SSD,” with allegations of yet non-UUoverTruffen performance tailored to modern AI work loads.
9650 SSD reportedly strikes sequential reading speeds of up to 28 GB/s and sequential writing speeds of up to 14 GB/s.
However, it comes in E3.S and E1.’s form factors, making it incompatible with standard desktop PCs, limiting its direct accessibility to wider consumer markets.
Designed for performance but limited by form factor
This new model is targeted at high-intensity AI environments, offering 5.5 million IOPs in random reading and up to 900K IOPS for random writing.
Micron’s 9650 is improved on Gen5 SSDs by up to 25% and 67% greater energy efficiency for random writing and readings.
It also contains fluid cooling options for close server configurations, and its reduced power pull and emissions support both benefit gains and sustainability efforts in data centers.
“With the industry’s first PCIE Gen6 SSD, industry-leading capabilities and the lowest latency Mainstream SSD-Alt run by our first-to-market G9 Nand-Micron not only sets the pace; we redefine Frontier of Data Center Innovation,” said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and Unit.
Although these specifications may sound impressive on paper, the real test will be in sustained workload in the real world in different operating conditions.
Several suppliers have highlighted their potential in supporting inferring pipes and retrieval-augmented generation, suggesting that 9650 could act as a key infrastructure component of GPU-based servers.
Still, wider adoption is likely to be related to pricing, reliability and actual ecosystem integration.
Alongside 9650, Micron also revealed its 7600 SSD based on PCIe Gen5 and Micron 6600 Ion SSD, which focuses on capacity.
7600 claims to deliver latency less than 1 millisecond by demanding database applications such as RockSDB.
With reading speeds reaching 12 GB/s, 7600 existing GEN5 SSDs surpass in measurements such as random writing and energy efficiency.
But the claims of having the fastest SSD must be balanced towards actual implementation of flexibility and sustained workload.
“Micron’s groundbreaking storage technologies show the importance of fast, efficient storage as AI workloads continue to redefine infrastructure requirements,” said Raghu Nambiar, Corporate Vice President, Data Center Ecosystems and Solutions, AMD.
