Micron announces world’s first PCIe Gen 6 SSD

Micron has recently unveiled its new portfolio of data centre SSDs based on its 9th generation 3D NAND, and the lineup includes some exciting products. The announcement is headlined by the Micron 9650, the world's first PCIe Gen 6 NVMe SSD, which arrives alongside the 6600 Ion, a drive that packs an incredible 122TB of storage into a compact form factor.

Leveraging the PCIe Gen 6 interface, the Micron 9650 delivers a sequential read speed of up to 28GB/s and 5.5 million random read IOPS, more than doubling the performance of many previous-gen drives. Aimed at AI training and inference workloads where throughput is key, the drive is also said to be up to 67% more power-efficient on reads than its Gen5 counterparts. Micron will be offering the 9650 in both E1.S and E3.S form factors with air and liquid-cooled options available.

For those who value capacity above all else, the Micron 6600 Ion SSD offers an unparalleled level of storage density. A 122TB version of the drive is set to arrive later this year in the E3.S form factor, with a mind-boggling 245TB variant scheduled for early 2026. These drives are designed to replace vast arrays of traditional hard drives, saving considerable amounts of physical rack space and power. Rounding out the new trio is the Micron 7600 SSD, positioned as a highly efficient and low-latency PCIe Gen5 solution for more common cloud applications and edge deployments.

Micron has stated that the new SSDs have already been validated with key partners, including Nvidia, Dell, Broadcom, and Astera Labs. Samples of the 9650 and 7600 are available to customers now, with the 122TB 6600 ION expected to land later in Q3. No pricing has been announced, but for this level of record-breaking performance, you can bet it won't be cheap.

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KitGuru says: PCIe Gen 6 drives will eventually make their way down to the consumer market but as always, this technology is being employed first in enterprise. With data centres requiring more and more storage, new ultra high-speed SSDs and high-capacity 100TB+ drives will be in demand.

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