Micron’s New 245 TB SSD Crushes HDDs With 84x Better Energy Efficiency, Slashing Data Center Rack Counts by 82%

Micron has just released the highest capacity and commercially available SSD to date, its 6600 ION, with a capacity of 245 TB.

You Can Practically Fit Anything You Want on Micron's 245 TB "6600 ION" SSD, but These Still Aren't Enough For Data Centers

Press Release: Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), today announced it is now shipping the 245TB capacity Micron 6600 ION SSD, the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD. The drive marks a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers and is designed to support AI, cloud, enterprise, and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation AI data lakes and cloud-scale file and object storage.

The 245TB Micron 6600 ION E3.L requires 82% fewer racks to achieve equivalent raw storage capacity compared to HDD-based deployments. Built with Micron G9 QLC NAND that is at least one generation ahead of any competing QLC used in data center SSDs, the 245TB Micron 6600 ION redefines high-capacity data center storage. Customers can now store and process significantly more data in far less space, while reducing power and cooling demands without sacrificing the performance required for large-scale, data-intensive workloads.

New economics for data center storage at quarter-petabyte scale

The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD is available in both U.2 and E3.L form factors for massive storage capacity. The smaller physical footprint and increased capacity per drive enable operational and data center management simplicity and reduce failure points and maintenance needs.

Power consumption is equally transformative. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consumes up to 30 watts (W) at maximum power, only half the power consumed by a comparable-capacity HDD. Additionally, these energy efficiency gains can support data center sustainability initiatives by helping reduce energy usage, cooling requirements, and carbon emissions — key priorities for global operators under increasing environmental and cost pressures.

Setting new performance and efficiency benchmarks for sustainable scale

The Micron 6600 ION SSD is built to support extreme-capacity deployments, demonstrating superior AI workload performance and energy efficiency at scale versus data centers utilizing HDDs. Testing in Micron labs demonstrates dramatic gains in energy efficiency, throughput, and latency versus HDD‑based systems:

• For AI workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION provided up to 84 times better energy efficiency, 8.6 times faster AI preprocessing, and 3.4 times better ingest throughput, with up to 29 times lower latency.
• Object storage workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION demonstrated up to 435 times better throughput per watt, 96 times faster time to first byte, and 58 times better aggregate throughput.

At scale, 1.9 times more energy is required for an HDD deployment versus 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSDs in a 1EB deployment. These at-scale energy efficiency gains can translate into measurable sustainability impacts, such as:

• HVAC cooling savings of over 3.14 billion British thermal units (Btu) per year
• CO₂ savings equivalent to the amount of CO₂ absorbed by over 9,000 mature trees per year
• 438 metric tons (MT) per year of CO₂ reduction
• 921 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year of energy saved

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