Everything you need to know about Micron’s “game-changer” 6550 ION SSD

1 week ago 3

Micron describes its new SSD as an industry "game-changer"
Launch marks the first SSD boasting a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface
The 6550 ION matches performance with energy efficiency

Micron recently unveiled the 6550 ION SSD, marking the launch of the industry’s first 60TB storage device featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface.

In an announcement, the firm revealed the new SSD is catered specifically to handle bulky applications as well as AI training and inference workloads.

Speaking at the time, Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron’s data center storage group, said the drive boasts extreme performance and capacity alongside industry-leading energy efficiency, calling it, "a game-changer for high-capacity storage solutions to address the insatiable capacity and power demands of AI workloads."

Micron has been highly vocal about the capabilities of the new ION SSD, so here’s everything you need to know about the 6550 ION SSD.

Under the hood of the 6550 ION SSD

As mentioned by Toledo, the new drive comes in an E3.S form-factor, meaning it offers “best-inclass” storage density and boasts 232 active layers. According to Micron, this significantly reduces rack storage requirements by up to 67%.

The 6550 also provides users with read and write speeds of 12GB/s despite operating on just 20 watts of power. This, the company noted, makes it 20% more energy efficient than comparable drives currently available in the market.

Micron said users do have the option to operate the drive at 25 watts, but this will only be utilized by a small portion of customers.

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Compared to competing 60TB drives, the company also highlighted a number of key advantages, including:

179% faster sequential reads and 179% higher read bandwidth per watt
80% improved random reads and 99% higher read IOPS per watt
150% faster sequential writes and 213% higher write bandwidth per watt

With power efficiency a key talking point in the new SSD, the company revealed it also relies upon active state power management (ASPM), meaning the 6550 ION only consumes 4 watts in low-power modes. Micron added that the drive also offers 20% improved idle efficiency compared to others on the market.

Performance built for AI workloads

A key aspect of the 6550 ION is its ability to run AI workloads, according to Micron.

The drive boasts a 147% higher performance for NVIDIA® Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage (GDS) compared to competing models while also offering 104% better energy efficiency in this regard.

Similarly, with 30% higher efficiency in deep learning Unet3D testing and a 151% improvement in completion times for AI model checkpointing, the SSD provides enterprises with a powerful piece of hardware tailor made for the AI era.