Micron ships the world’s “highest capacity” SSD – 245TB 6600 ION
Micron’s 6600 ION SSD is the storage density king
Micron has officially launched the “world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD”, their 245.76 TB 6600 ION. This datacenter SSD is designed for rack-scale deployments to support AI, cloud, enterprise, and hyperscale workloads. This drive allows an absurd amount of data to be stored on a single drive, which at datacenter scale greatly reduces power, cooling, and space requirements. This is especially true for HDD-based storage arrays.
The 660 ION uses Micon’s G9 QLC NAND flash, which Micron claims is “at least one generation ahead of any competing QLC”. This drive is available in both U.2 and E3.L form factors, allowing 245TB of data to be stored in a drive that consumes up to 30 watts of power. That’s half the power a comparable-capacity HDD deployment would require. This significantly reduces datacenter power and cooling requirements.
Insane storage density
For AI workloads, Micron claims this SSD delivers 84x the energy efficiency of HDD-based systems, 8.6x faster AI preprocessing, 3.4x higher ingest throughput, and 29x lower latency. For object storage workloads, Micron’s 245TB 6600 ION reportedly delivers 435x better throughput per watt, 96x faster time to first byte, and 58x faster aggregate throughput.
Micron is marketing this SSD as a replacement for large HDD storage solutions. It delivers much higher levels of data output while also providing significant power and spatial savings. This translates into reduced datacenter power requirements and a lowered environmental impact. Strangely, Micron’s press release did not list the exact speed of its 6600 ION SSD. This suggests that this SSD is far from the fastest available. That said, its capacity per drive is where this SSD thrives.
– Update – Micron’s official documentation for this SSD gives their 245TB 6600 ION model a maximum sequential read speed of 13,700 MB/s. However, its maximum write speed is significantly lower at 3,000 MB/s. If this SSD is used in read-focused workloads, it will be incredibly fast. That said, write-focused workloads are not this SSD’s strength.
If you want to see this SSD in action, Micron will be displayed at Dell Tech World on May 18th-21st. It will be shown at the Micron booth (#226). This drive will be shown as part of a 40-slot Dell PowerEdge server.
You can join the discussion on Micron’s 6600 ION SSD on the OC3D Forums.
