The Micron 6550 ION SSD: Gen5 Performance, Energy Efficiency, and High Capacity in One Drive

The Micron 6550 ION SSD combines Gen5 speed and 61.44TB E3.S-1T capacity, setting new benchmarks in performance, efficiency, and security.

Today, Micron launched the new 6550 ION SSD, positioning it as the “world’s fastest, most energy-efficient 60TB data center SSD.” Available in various form factors, the triumph is the E3.S drive, which, at just 7.5mm in z-height, offers an industry-leading drive capacity using G8 61.44TB of TLC NAND, paired with a Gen5 interface. This combo solves critical enterprise challenges that demand extremely dense, affordable, and fast SSD storage.

The Micron 6550 ION offers massive performance and capacity benefits over the 6500 ION, its predecessor. It adheres to PCIe Gen5 standards and incorporates future-proofing capabilities through OCP 2.5. Micron has prioritized security in the 6550 ION, ensuring TAA and FIPS 140-3 L2 certifiability and a comprehensive security suite.

Before releasing the TLC-based Micron 6550 ION, manufacturers needed to use QLC NAND to hit the 61.44TB capacity point. Besides the newer Gen5 interface, G8 TLC NAND offers better write performance, energy efficiency, and endurance than QLC NAND. From a performance perspective, the drive hits sequential read speeds of 12GB/s and sequential write speeds of 5GB/s using only 20W maximum. These figures translate into up to 179% superior read throughput compared to competitors and up to 150% enhanced write throughput. Regarding write speed, the fill rate of the 61.44TB Micron 6550 ION is just 3.4 hours. Furthermore, the Micron 6550 ION demonstrates impressive throughput capabilities, reaching 1.6M IOPS in 4K random reads, up to 80% faster than current competitors.

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