Micron's ION 6550 is a 60 TB high-capacity Gen5 SSD in a compact form factor for data center needs & brings more energy efficiency than predecessors.
Micron ION 6550 is a PCI-E 5.0 60 TB SSD, featuring a 12 GB/s sequential read speed at just 20 watts
The leading memory and storage manufacturer, Micron, has today launched its most powerful storage solution for data centers: ION 6550 SSD. It is a PCI-E Gen 5.0 SSD, that brings 60 TB storage space for high storage demands and delivers exceptional read/write speed and efficiency.
The ION 6550 is built using the E3.S form factor, making it the only data center SSD to reach 60 TB of storage capacity. This is achieved while increasing the power efficiency and sequential read/write speeds to achieve high performance while consuming less power. The ION 6550 succeeds the ION 6500 SSD and brings several improvements to ensure users get their demands fulfilled with up to 179% faster sequential read speed.
As per Micron's PR, the ION 6550 can also deliver up to 179% higher read bandwidth per watt than 6500, 150% faster sequential write speed, 213% higher write bandwidth per watt, 80% faster random readers, and 99% higher read IOPS per watt. All of this while ensuring 20% better energy efficiency.
The VP and GM of Micron's Data Center Storage Group, Alvaro Toledo, says,
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.
Compared to the competitive 60 TB SSD, the ION 6550 delivers:
- 147% higher performance for NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage (GDS) and 104% better energy efficiency
- 30% higher 4KB transfer performance for deep learning IO Unet3D testing and 20% better energy efficiency
- 151% improvement in completion times for AI model checkpointing while competitors consume 209% more energy
The ION 6550 can be fully written in just 3.4 hours, which is 150% faster than its competitors. Not only does the SSD deliver quicker read/write speeds, but it is also available in various form factors, such as E1.L, U.2, and E3.S, which reduces the footprint by up to 67%. ION 6550 can be utilized in a high-density 1U server in sets of 20 E3.S drives to achieve a staggering 44.2 petabytes of storage space in a single rack.
Through the usage of Micron ION 6550, data centers can reduce their operating costs, scale their business for AI and Big Data, reduce footprints, and deploy enhanced security. The Corporate VP of Data Center Ecosystems and Solutions at AMD, Raghu Nambiar said,
The introduction of the Micron 6550 ION SSD is a groundbreaking advancement for data-intensive and emerging AI applications. Such innovations in storage technologies enable dense and energy-efficient solutions that evolve our customer’s infrastructure capabilities,
This allows it to reach a 67% higher density than 2U servers while increasing the storage capacity by about 17.7 petabytes. The ION 6550 also brings better endurance than competitors with 1.0 random drive writes per day for 16KB random writes, which is a 42% endurance increase over other SSDs.
Furthermore, it is equipped with SPDM 1.2 for attestation and SHA-512 for secure signature generation to ensure optimal security. This is essential for data centers due to sensitive data storage in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and AI research.
About the author: Sarfraz Khan is a hardware reporter with a focus on PC components and the builder community. With years of experience writing about PC hardware and laptops, his work has been featured on several reputable technology publications. Sarfraz's hands-on experience is demonstrated through his first-person accounts of using and comparing different hardware configurations, providing practical and relatable insights for everyday users. His technical analysis is respected by peers in the enthusiast community and has been cited by specialized hardware sites such as Germany's Igor's Lab.
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