Tuesday, July 29th 2025

Micron Unveils Portfolio of Industry-First SSDs to Power the AI Revolution
Micron Technology, Inc., develops innovative memory and storage solutions to address the data needs of the AI-driven data center with superior performance, capacity and energy efficiency. Today Micron extends its industry leadership in storage with the launch of three new data center SSDs all built with Micron G9 NAND. This expansion of Micron's storage portfolio includes the world's first PCIe Gen 6 NVMe SSD, industry-leading capacity for an E3.S SSD and the lowest latency mainstream Gen 5 SSD for AI data centers. These new products are highly performant, energy and space efficient, and validated with leading ecosystem partners to streamline qualification and ensure seamless integration, making them the ideal portfolio for the widely divergent needs of AI workloads.
"With the industry's first PCIe Gen 6 SSD, industry-leading capacities and the lowest latency mainstream SSD—all powered by our first-to-market G9 NAND—Micron is not just setting the pace; we are redefining the frontier of data center innovation," said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and general manager of Micron's Core Data Center Business Unit. "This launch cements our leadership in data center SSDs and signals a new era of performance, density and efficiency for our customers."Micron 9650 SSD: The world's first PCIe Gen 6 data center SSD
The unmatched 28 GB/s performance of the 9650 SSD dramatically accelerates AI training and inference workloads. 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 Gen 5 SSDs, achieving up to 25% and 67% better storage energy efficiency for random writes and reads, respectively. The reduction in power consumption and carbon emissions allows data centers to meet sustainability goals while enhancing performance.
"Advanced AI reasoning workloads require agents to swiftly access massive volumes of business and internet data," said Kevin Deierling, senior vice president of Networking at NVIDIA. "PCIe Gen 6 SSDs like the Micron 9650 provide high-speed data access to support accelerated computing performance and efficiency for AI inference and training."
Micron 6600 ION SSD: Massive density with the best-in-class space efficiency for AI data lakes
The Micron 6600 ION SSD delivers breakthrough scalability featuring up to 245TBs in a single drive, enabling hyperscale and enterprise data centers to consolidate server infrastructure and build massive AI data lakes—all while reducing storage footprint, energy and carbon emissions. This offering increases storage density up to 67% over the competition and delivers over 88 PB per rack using servers, drastically reducing TCO.
"The Micron 6600 ION is a game-changer for AI infrastructure, delivering exceptional capacity and performance that enables WEKA customers to manage and process larger datasets with less infrastructure and lower energy use," said Ajay Singh, chief product officer at WEKA. "We're also excited about the Micron 9650 PCIe Gen 6 SSD, which pairs perfectly with our Augmented Memory Grid technology, which extends GPU memory by leveraging ultra-fast NVMe to accelerate time to first token, boost token throughput, and help avoid the memory wall in high-throughput inference environments."
Micron 7600 SSD: Leading performance for AI inference and mixed workloads
The 7600 PCIe Gen 5 SSD offers class-leading performance, low latency and high-reliability QoS to support predictable, lightning-fast responsiveness for demanding data center workloads like AI transformation, training and inference. Capable of delivering industry-best sub-1 millisecond latency on the taxing RocksDB workload, the 7600 SSD is ideal for workloads where response time is critical. The 7600 SSD provides the right balance of affordability, performance and predictable latency for most data center workloads including AI.
Micron's vertical integration ensures that each of these SSDs is designed and manufactured with a Micron controller, G9 NAND, DRAM, firmware and manufacturing processes. This integration helps provide exceptional quality and a more reliable, secure supply chain. Additionally, key security features—including hardware root of trust, SPDM 1.2 (attestation) for identity authentication and firmware verification, CNSA 2.0 dual signed PKI/LMS firmware binary, self-encrypting drive (SED) and Micron Secure Execution Environment—help secure data. OCP 2.6 support is available for the Micron 9650 and 6600 ION SSDs, and the 7600 SSD utilizes OCP 2.5 support.
Availability
The 9650 and 7600 SSD samples are shipping now to customers. The 9650 is offered in E3.S and E1.S 9.5 mm and 15 mm form factors with air-cooled and liquid-cooled options. The 7600 SSD is available in multiple form factors, including E3.S, U.2 and E1.S with air-cooled heat sink options. The 6600 ION 122 TB SSD samples are shipping later in the third quarter of calendar year 2025 in E3.S and U.2 form factors. The 245 TB SSD version of the 6600 ION SSD is planned to be available in the first half of calendar year 2026.
Werner will present at the Future of Memory and Storage Summit 2025 with a keynote address on Aug. 5 at 1 p.m. PT. The 9650, 6600 ION and 7600 SSDs—along with Micron HBM4, SOCAMM and LPDDR5 memory—will be showcased at Micron's booth (#107) from Aug. 5-7, highlighting Micron's extensive portfolio of data center memory and storage products.
More thoughts from the industry…
"Micron's cutting-edge storage technologies showcase 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. "Our close engineering collaboration with Micron ensures their storage innovations are well-positioned to unlock the full potential of next-generation server platforms powered by AMD. Together, we're enabling the performance, scalability and efficiency needed to support today's most demanding enterprise applications."
"The sheer velocity of AI—from ever-growing frontier models to the proliferation of agentic systems—demands a leap forward in data movement," said Thad Omura, Chief Business Officer at Astera Labs. "To utilize the full potential of rack-scale compute, next generation PCI Express is critical not just for increased throughput, but for boosting overall system efficiency and enabling more performance per watt, which accelerates AI breakthroughs. Our demonstrated end-to-end PCIe 6 interoperability, connecting Micron's 9650 SSD with our Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switches and Aries Smart PCIe Gen 6 Retimers, is key to enabling the high-bandwidth, low-latency fabric vital for AI at scale."
"Interoperability testing with Micron's new 9650 SSD and the Marvell Alaska P PCIe Gen 6 retimer marks a key milestone in advancing the PCIe Gen 6 ecosystem and supports our joint development efforts for hyperscale customers," said Xi Wang, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity BU of Marvell. "Combining the high-performance, energy-efficient SSD with the PCIe retimer's robust link extension capabilities removes physical barriers between compute and storage—giving customers the flexibility to optimize for a wide range of AI workloads."
"With the industry's first PCIe Gen 6 SSD, industry-leading capacities and the lowest latency mainstream SSD—all powered by our first-to-market G9 NAND—Micron is not just setting the pace; we are redefining the frontier of data center innovation," said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and general manager of Micron's Core Data Center Business Unit. "This launch cements our leadership in data center SSDs and signals a new era of performance, density and efficiency for our customers."Micron 9650 SSD: The world's first PCIe Gen 6 data center SSD
The unmatched 28 GB/s performance of the 9650 SSD dramatically accelerates AI training and inference workloads. 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 Gen 5 SSDs, achieving up to 25% and 67% better storage energy efficiency for random writes and reads, respectively. The reduction in power consumption and carbon emissions allows data centers to meet sustainability goals while enhancing performance.
- Record-setting Gen 6 performance:
- Up to 28 GB/s sequential read and 14 GB/s sequential write speeds
- Up to 5.5 MIOPS random read and 900 KIOPS random write speeds
- FIPS 140-3 Level 2 and Trade Agreement Act (TAA) compliant options help ensure SSDs sold to the U.S. government are manufactured or substantially transformed in the United States or in designated countries.
- Pioneering ecosystem collaborations, including prior public demonstrations with Astera Labs and Broadcom accelerate adoption through proven interoperability.
- A liquid-cooled E1.S version is available for the most advanced AI servers.
"Advanced AI reasoning workloads require agents to swiftly access massive volumes of business and internet data," said Kevin Deierling, senior vice president of Networking at NVIDIA. "PCIe Gen 6 SSDs like the Micron 9650 provide high-speed data access to support accelerated computing performance and efficiency for AI inference and training."
Micron 6600 ION SSD: Massive density with the best-in-class space efficiency for AI data lakes
The Micron 6600 ION SSD delivers breakthrough scalability featuring up to 245TBs in a single drive, enabling hyperscale and enterprise data centers to consolidate server infrastructure and build massive AI data lakes—all while reducing storage footprint, energy and carbon emissions. This offering increases storage density up to 67% over the competition and delivers over 88 PB per rack using servers, drastically reducing TCO.
- The industry-leading 122 TB E3.S SSD is approximately the size of a deck of cards, providing an incredible 2.4 PB of PCIe Gen 5 flash storage in a 1U server.
- The 122 TB 6600 ION consumes only 1 watt per 4.9 TB, offering 37% better energy efficiency than the three 36 TB HDDs required to deliver the same capacity, all in less than a quarter of the space.
- For storage deployments with 2 exabytes of storage, the 6600 ION delivers up to 3.4 megawatt-hours of daily energy savings over HDDs—which is enough energy to power 124 average U.S. homes every day.
- The 6600 ION SSD provides the ultimate in data protection by supporting advanced enterprise-grade security features.
"The Micron 6600 ION is a game-changer for AI infrastructure, delivering exceptional capacity and performance that enables WEKA customers to manage and process larger datasets with less infrastructure and lower energy use," said Ajay Singh, chief product officer at WEKA. "We're also excited about the Micron 9650 PCIe Gen 6 SSD, which pairs perfectly with our Augmented Memory Grid technology, which extends GPU memory by leveraging ultra-fast NVMe to accelerate time to first token, boost token throughput, and help avoid the memory wall in high-throughput inference environments."
Micron 7600 SSD: Leading performance for AI inference and mixed workloads
The 7600 PCIe Gen 5 SSD offers class-leading performance, low latency and high-reliability QoS to support predictable, lightning-fast responsiveness for demanding data center workloads like AI transformation, training and inference. Capable of delivering industry-best sub-1 millisecond latency on the taxing RocksDB workload, the 7600 SSD is ideal for workloads where response time is critical. The 7600 SSD provides the right balance of affordability, performance and predictable latency for most data center workloads including AI.
- With best-in-class sequential reads of 12 GB/s, the 7600 SSD outperforms competitive mainstream SSDs, with up to:
- 27% better sequential writes with 7 GB/s
- 5% better random reads with 2.1 MIOPS
- 100% better random writes with 400 KIOPS
- Unrivaled RocksDB workload performance and energy efficiency compared to competitive Gen 5 SSDs, as follows:
Micron's vertical integration ensures that each of these SSDs is designed and manufactured with a Micron controller, G9 NAND, DRAM, firmware and manufacturing processes. This integration helps provide exceptional quality and a more reliable, secure supply chain. Additionally, key security features—including hardware root of trust, SPDM 1.2 (attestation) for identity authentication and firmware verification, CNSA 2.0 dual signed PKI/LMS firmware binary, self-encrypting drive (SED) and Micron Secure Execution Environment—help secure data. OCP 2.6 support is available for the Micron 9650 and 6600 ION SSDs, and the 7600 SSD utilizes OCP 2.5 support.
Availability
The 9650 and 7600 SSD samples are shipping now to customers. The 9650 is offered in E3.S and E1.S 9.5 mm and 15 mm form factors with air-cooled and liquid-cooled options. The 7600 SSD is available in multiple form factors, including E3.S, U.2 and E1.S with air-cooled heat sink options. The 6600 ION 122 TB SSD samples are shipping later in the third quarter of calendar year 2025 in E3.S and U.2 form factors. The 245 TB SSD version of the 6600 ION SSD is planned to be available in the first half of calendar year 2026.
Werner will present at the Future of Memory and Storage Summit 2025 with a keynote address on Aug. 5 at 1 p.m. PT. The 9650, 6600 ION and 7600 SSDs—along with Micron HBM4, SOCAMM and LPDDR5 memory—will be showcased at Micron's booth (#107) from Aug. 5-7, highlighting Micron's extensive portfolio of data center memory and storage products.
More thoughts from the industry…
"Micron's cutting-edge storage technologies showcase 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. "Our close engineering collaboration with Micron ensures their storage innovations are well-positioned to unlock the full potential of next-generation server platforms powered by AMD. Together, we're enabling the performance, scalability and efficiency needed to support today's most demanding enterprise applications."
"The sheer velocity of AI—from ever-growing frontier models to the proliferation of agentic systems—demands a leap forward in data movement," said Thad Omura, Chief Business Officer at Astera Labs. "To utilize the full potential of rack-scale compute, next generation PCI Express is critical not just for increased throughput, but for boosting overall system efficiency and enabling more performance per watt, which accelerates AI breakthroughs. Our demonstrated end-to-end PCIe 6 interoperability, connecting Micron's 9650 SSD with our Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switches and Aries Smart PCIe Gen 6 Retimers, is key to enabling the high-bandwidth, low-latency fabric vital for AI at scale."
"Interoperability testing with Micron's new 9650 SSD and the Marvell Alaska P PCIe Gen 6 retimer marks a key milestone in advancing the PCIe Gen 6 ecosystem and supports our joint development efforts for hyperscale customers," said Xi Wang, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity BU of Marvell. "Combining the high-performance, energy-efficient SSD with the PCIe retimer's robust link extension capabilities removes physical barriers between compute and storage—giving customers the flexibility to optimize for a wide range of AI workloads."
2 Comments on Micron Unveils Portfolio of Industry-First SSDs to Power the AI Revolution
The fact thst we are still at 8TB on the consumer side at still expensive prices is taking the piss.