If you thought NVMe SSDs were already super-fast, think again. Micron has officially introduced the world's first mass-produced PCIe 6.0 SSD. The all-new Micron 9650 series takes full advantage of a PCIe 6.0 x4 interface to achieve up to a whopping 28 GB/s in read speeds, double that of the world's fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The drive is optimized for AI/data center deployments and comes in data center-focused E1.S and E3.S form factors. Pricing was not disclosed, but since the 9650 is a datacenter drive, don't expect a static MSRP to be announced.
Micron will have several iterations of the 9650 featuring the 9650 Pro and 9650 Max. The Pro variant will feature three capacities: 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB, and 30.72 TB. The Max variant offers lower-capacity trims across the board compared to the Pro models, with 6.4TB, 12.8TB, and 25.6TB models, respectively. Sequential read speeds peak at up to 28 GB/s, sequential write speeds 14GB/s, random read speeds 5,400 KIOPS, and random write speeds 500 KIOPS for both Pro and Max models.
