Micron has announced the availability of what is claims to be the world’s fastest data center SSD.
Available in capacities from 3.2TB to 30.72TB and in U.2, E1.S, and E3.S form factors, the Micron 9550 is designed for superior performance and power efficiency, making it particularly suited for AI workloads.
Integrating Micron’s controller, NAND, DRAM, and firmware, the Micron 9550 SSD supports PCIe Gen5 server designs and offers 14.0 GB/s sequential reads and 10.0 GB/s sequential writes, outperforming similar SSDs from the likes of Kioxia and Samsung by up to 67%, based on Micron's own testing.
Sampling globally
The Micron 9550 SSD achieves 3,300 KIOPS in random reads and 400 KIOPS in random writes, with improvements of up to 35% and 33% respectively. This makes it well-suited for demanding AI applications, including large language models and graph neural networks.
The Micron 9550 SSD reportedly achieves up to 81% less SSD energy per 1TB transferred with Nvidia Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage. It also reduces SSD energy usage by up to 35% in MLPerf benchmarks and up to 21% in Llama LLM training fine-tuning with Microsoft DeepSpeed.
Currently sampling globally, the 9550 SSD’s vertically integrated architecture offers advanced security features, including self-encrypting drive capabilities and compliance with SPDM 1.2.
“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 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.”
