Micron has introduced its Micron 9550-series SSDs, which it claims are the fastest enterprise drives in the industry. The Micron 9550 Pro and 9550 Max SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface promise unbeatable performance amid enhanced endurance and power efficiency, which will be particularly beneficial for data centersMicron's 9550-series solid-state drives are based on a proprietary NVMe 2.0b controller with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface and 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory. The drives will be available in capacities ranging from 3.2 TB to 30.72 TB with one or three drive writes per day endurance as well as U.2, E1.S, and E3.S form factors to cater to the requirements of different types of servers.

As far as performance is concerned, the Micron 9550 NVMe SSD boasts impressive metrics, including up to sustainable 14.0 GB/s sequential read speeds and 10.0 GB/s sequential write speeds, which is higher compared to the peak performance offered by Samsung's PM1743 SSDs. For random operations, it achieves 3,300 million IOPS in random reads and 0.9 million IOPS in random writes, again surpassing competitor offerings.

Micron says that power efficiency is another standout feature of its Micron 9550 SSD: It consumes up to 81% less SSD energy per terabyte transferred with NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage and up to 35% lower SSD power usage in MLPerf benchmarks compared to rivals. Considering that we are dealing with a claim by the manufacturer itself, the numbers should be taken with caution.

Micron 9550 NVMe Enterprise SSDs
  9550 PRO 9550 MAX
Form Factor U.2, E1.S, and E3.S U.2, E1.S
Interface PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe 2.0b
Capacities 3.84 TB
7.68 TB
15.36 TB
30.72 TB
3.2 TB
6.4 TB
12.8 TB
25.6 TB
NAND Micron 232L 3D TLC
Sequential Read up to 14,000 MBps
Sequential Write up to 10,000 MBps
Random Read (4 KB) up to 3.3M IOPS
Random Write (4 KB) up to 900K IOPS
Power Operating Read: up to 18W
Write: up to 16W
Idle ? W ? W
Write Endurance 1 DWPD 3 DWPD
Warranty 5 year"

"The Micron 9550 SSD represents a giant leap forward for data center storage, delivering a staggering 3.3 million IOPS while consuming up to 43% less power than comparable SSDs in AI workloads such as GNN and LLM training", said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron's’s Data Center Storage group. "This unparalleled performance, combined with exceptional power efficiency, establishes a new benchmark for AI storage solutions and demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to spearheading the AI revolution."

Micron traditionally offers its high-end data center SSDs in different flavors: the Micron 9550 Pro drives for read-intensive applications are set to be available in 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB, and 30.72 TB capacities with one drive writes per day (DWPD) endurance rating, whereas the Micron 9550 Max for mixed-use are set to be available in 3.2 TB, 6.4 TB, 12.8 TB, and 25.6 TB capacities with three DWPD endurance rating. All drives comply with the OCP 2.0 r21 standards and OCP 2.5 telemetry. They also feature SPDM 1.2 and FIPS 140-3 security, secure execution environment, and self-encrypting drive options.

Micron has not touched upon the pricing of the new drives as it depends on volumes and other factors.

Source: Micron

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  • sjkpublic@gmail.com - Wednesday, July 24, 2024 - link

    Power consumption a bit high. Endurance now eschewed from TBW to DWPD?
  • back2future - Thursday, July 25, 2024 - link

    factor for 5yrs*365 for 1DWPD ~1825 and for 3DWPD ~5475 times capacity, results to lowest of both variants being around 7000TB and highest (with 25.6TB 9550 MAX) ~140160TB or 135PB (?)
  • James5mith - Thursday, July 25, 2024 - link

    I mean, they are basically just leaving the math as an exercise for the reader. I don't particularly appreciate it, but it's not like they are changing the game.

    For the market they are in, people mostly want to know how many DWPD they can handle. They don't care about total written data.
  • FunBunny2 - Saturday, July 27, 2024 - link

    " They don't care about total written data. "

    when your the XYZ Corp. buying by the thousands, all you care about is certified performance to warranty date. your going to trash the drives just a nanosecond before reaching it. it's all just a business expense, and the drive that meets the spec at lowest cost per bit/byte/year will be bought. the NAND could be made from sheep's dung for all the Bean Counters care.
  • SanX - Thursday, July 25, 2024 - link

    DWPD is good that it does not depend on capacity and immediately tells you about how many P/E cycles each cell sustain. 1 DWPD means for example 1825 cycles if warranty period is 5 years (365*5)
  • SanX - Thursday, July 25, 2024 - link

    Question is - does 3 DWPD mean some new 10x better than typical technology for TLC or the company hired some superbright flashlight or unseen capacity lithium batteries sellers from eBay to run marketing department?
  • Santoval - Friday, July 26, 2024 - link

    No, the flash in both series is identical (232-L TLC), as are the controllers.
    Note that the MAX series has a much lower (usable) capacity.
    That's flash over-provisioning to make them reach 3DWPD.

    The fattest model had 5+ TB of flash trimmed, to use as a spare for destroyed cells replacement. So the flash is nothing special; the SSDs simply trade lower capacity for higher endurance.
  • back2future - Sunday, July 28, 2024 - link

    [ it's exactly 16.67% lower capacity for all sizes from above numbers ]
  • FunBunny2 - Tuesday, July 30, 2024 - link

    "So the flash is nothing special; the SSDs simply trade lower capacity for higher endurance."

    but, but... weren't we promised that this new fangled 3D TLC/QLC NAND would last LONGER than olde fashioned planar NAND because it would be fabricated on legacy XXnm nodes?? did they fib?
  • CiccioB - Saturday, July 27, 2024 - link

    Well, not, it is does not tell you anything immediately, because that value depends on the time frame you consider as valid.
    To know how good is that value, you have to know the warranty period.
    The absolute quantity of minimum guaranteed writable data instead does not depends on time.
    You know you can write N TB of data before a cell retention capacity may be compromised. Doesn't matter when and for how long.

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