Micron this week announced its 9650 SSD, the industry's first solid-state drive with a PCIe 6.0 x4 host interface aimed at performance-hungry workloads and offering unprecedented sequential read speed and random performance. In addition, the company formally introduced its 6600 ION family of SSDs with capacities of up to 245 TB.
Micron's data center-grade 9650 SSD is based on a proprietary controller designed in-house and the company's 9th Generation 276-layer 3D TLC NAND with a 3.6 GT/s interface. The PCIe Gen6 drive promises a sequential read speed of up to 28,000 MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s, which by far exceeds the capabilities of the best SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. As for random performance, the drive is speced for up to 5.5M read IOPS, which is a record, and up to 0.9M write IOPS, which is a moderate result for an enterprise-grade SSD.
For now, Micron positions its 9650 SSD primarily for AI servers that need extreme performance both for sequential reads and (more importantly) random reads. The drives will be available in E1.S (9.5mm and 15mm) as well as E3.S 1T form-factors, with some drives being friendly to liquid cooling systems for consistent performance under high loads.
Micron already demonstrated its 9650 SSDs with Astera Labs and Broadcom at various trade shows, including Computex. The drive is meant to communicate in peer-to-peer PCIe 6.0 mode at 64 GT/s with Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs using Astera's or Broadcom's retimers and switches without CPU intervention, which is important both for AI training and inference workloads.
"With up to 5.5 million IOPS for random reads, the Micron 9650 is purpose-built for AI pipelines' high-throughput, low-latency demands," said Arunkumar Narayanan, senior vice president of Compute and Networking, Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) at Dell Technologies. "This product helps ensure GPUs remain continuously fed with data, minimizing idle cycles and maximizing system efficiency. Combined with Dell’s advanced server architecture, this innovation empowers enterprises to unlock new levels of performance and insight."
In addition to the high-performance 9650 SSD with a PCIe 6.0 x4 interface, Micron also announced its 6600 ION SSD family that is designed for high-density, power-efficient storage in AI and hyperscale data centers.
The 6600 ION drives are based on a platform with a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface and Micron's 276-layer G9 3D QLC NAND to enable up to 14,000 MB/s sequential read speed as well as up to 2M random read IOPS. The drives will be initially available in capacities of 30.72TB, 61.44TB, and 122.88TB, and offered in E3.S 1T (7.5mm) and U.2 (15mm) form factors. But in the first half of 2026, the company will also offer a 245TB flavor of its 6600 ION SSD.
Micron's 6600 ION drives are optimized for capacity-centric workloads, not peak IOPS, and achieve 4.9 TB per watt, making them 37% more power-efficient than HDDs, according to the company. The SSD consumes 5W idle and draws up to 25W under heavy loads.
Samples of Micron's 9650 SSD are shipping now to customers. Samples of the 122TB 6600 ION SSD will begin shipping in E3.S and U.2 form factors later in Q3 2025. A 245TB version of the 6600 ION is scheduled for release in the first half of 2026.
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