Micron Technology has started shipping the 245 TB Micron 6600 ION SSD, which it describes as the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD. The product is aimed at data centers and is built to support Artificial Intelligence, cloud, enterprise and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation Artificial Intelligence data lakes and cloud-scale file and object storage.
The 245 TB Micron 6600 ION E3.L requires 82% fewer racks to achieve equivalent raw storage capacity compared to HDD-based deployments. Micron says the drive is built with Micron G9 QLC NAND that is at least one generation ahead of any competing QLC used in data center SSDs. The company positions the drive as a way for customers to store and process significantly more data in far less space while reducing power and cooling demands without giving up the performance needed for large-scale, data-intensive workloads.
Micron says growing Artificial Intelligence workloads are increasing shared data volumes and accelerating the shift in data center storage from HDDs toward SSDs. The company argues that 245 TB in a single SSD gives operators a new way to improve rack-level total cost of ownership, especially as power availability becomes a more important constraint on scaling Artificial Intelligence infrastructure.
