Micron unveils industry’s first 60TB SSD with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface

Micron has introduced the 6550 ION solid-state drive, the industry’s first 60TB SSD that features a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and therefore boasts with extreme capacity and very high performance. The drive is aimed at applications that require significant amount of storage as well as decent performance, which includes AI training and inference workloads. Micron also touts improved energy efficiency of its new drive compared to predecessors and competing offerings. 

Micron’s 6550 ION SSD comes in a E3.S form-factor and is based on the company’s eight-generation 3D NAND with 232 active layers that combines high storage density, high performance, and low power consumption. The new drive delivers read and write speeds of 12GB/s while operating on just 20 watts of power, making it 20% more efficient than leading competitor drives. For those who want to have even higher performance, the drive can operate at 25W, though Micron does not expect many customers to use this mode. 

Power management is a significant advantage of Micron’s 6550 ION as it employs active state power management (ASPM), idling at only 4 watts in its low-power mode and provides up to 20% better idle efficiency than other 60TB SSDs.  

“The Micron 6550 ION achieves a remarkable 12GB/s while using just 20 watts of power, setting a new standard in data center performance and energy efficiency,” said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron’s Data Center Storage Group. “Featuring a first-to-market 60TB capacity in an E3.S form factor and up to 20% better energy efficiency than competitive drives, the Micron 6550 ION is a game-changer for high-capacity storage solutions to address the insatiable capacity and power demands of AI workloads.” 

This drive is particularly valuable for AI workloads as it shows a 147% improvement in Nvidia Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage operations and is 30% more efficient in deep learning Unet3D transfer tasks with a 4KB transfer size. It further excels in model…