Micron 9550 PCIe 5 SSD Lays Claim To World's Fastest Data Center Storage At 14GB/s
Storage solutions that tap into the PCI Express 5.0 bus are relatively few and far between (compared to PCIe 4.0 and 3.0 drives), but are starting to ramp up. The newest entry into the high-speed Gen 5 category comes from Micron with the introduction of its 9550 SSD series, and it takes aim squarely at data centers in need of blazing-fast storage.
Micron splits the 9550 series into two families, those being the 9550 Pro in 3.84TB, 7.68TB, 15.36TB, and 30.72TB capacities; and the 9550 Max that's offered in 3.2TB, 6.4TB, 12.8TB, and 25.6TB capacities. Every single model is rated to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 14,000MB/s (14GB/s), essentially matching the fastest speeds on tap in the consumer space, white sequential write speeds among both the Pro and Max variants range from 6,000MB/s (6GB/s) to 10,000MB/s (10GB/s), depending on the capacity.
Looking at 4K random reads and writes, speeds top out at 3.3 million IOPS for the former and 900,000 IOPS for the latter, both of which also vary by capacity (the 6.4TB-capacity 9550 Pro Max SSDs is the fastest among the bunch, hitting the max rated speeds across the board, followed by the 12.8TB model that only falls a little shore for sequential writes at 9,000MB/s or 9GB/s).
Micron envisions these SSDs powering the emerging era of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads in the cloud, including large language models (LLMs) requiring high sequential reads, and graph neural networks (GNNs) that need high random read performance.
"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."
Micron's also making some big power saving claim, to the tune of up to 81%, depending on the task. Here are the claims...
- GNN training with BaM: Up to 43% lower SSD average power and up to 29% reduction in overall system energy usage
- NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage: Up to 81% less SSD energy per 1TB transferred
- MLPerf: Up to 35% less SSD energy and up to 13% less system energy used
- Llama LLM training fine tuning with Microsoft DeepSpeed: Up to 21% less SSD energy used
Both the 9550 Pro and 9550 Max are offered in U.2 and E3.S form factors, while the Pro is also offered in the E1.6 form factor. Micron didn't announce any pricing, but said its 9550 SSDs are sampling globally.
