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What just happened? Micron has become the first in the industry to ship ninth-generation TLC NAND in SSDs, starting with a blazing-fast new model called the 2650. As AI workloads become more prevalent, having memory technology with fast performance could be critical.
Micron's G9 NAND represents a significant evolution, with the company highlighting increased storage density, improved power management, and impressive speed gains. The technology can deliver data at a blistering 3.6GB/sec, with Micron claiming it's the fastest TLC NAND available today. The company also states it offers 50 percent faster data transfer than any other NAND currently shipping in an SSD.
Additionally, G9's write bandwidth per NAND die is up to 99 percent higher than that of competing chips, while read bandwidth per die has received an 88 percent boost. This high throughput should help G9 meet the demands of modern data-intensive workloads, such as AI and machine learning tasks.
The new NAND also maintains a compact 11.5 x 13.5mm footprint, which Micon says uses 28 percent less space than rivals.
To showcase the capabilities of G9 NAND, Micron has launched the new 2650 NVMe SSD built around this technology, promising significant performance boosts for client devices. This SSD is the company's first product utilizing 276-layer 3D NAND. The drive is available in the M.2 format in 2230, 2242, and 2280 sizes, and offers capacities ranging from 256 GB to 1 TB.
In the company's own testing, the SSD achieved a PCMark 10 score of 3861, which is up to 38 percent better than the competition. This synthetic benchmark measures real-world desktop performance across various usage scenarios.
The 2650's other stats are equally impressive. It boasts sequential read speeds of up to 7,000 MBps, random read performance up to 156 percent better, and write speeds that are up to 103 percent faster sequentially and 85 percent faster randomly compared to other NAND drives.
"Nearing theoretical saturation levels for PCIe Gen4, the Micron 2650 SSD uses our new G9 NAND to push the boundaries of what a value TLC client SSD can achieve," said Prasad Alluri, Micron's vice president and general manager of Client Storage.
Meanwhile, Sumit Sadana, Micron's chief business officer, boldly declared that G9 represents their third consecutive generation setting the pace in NAND technology. He promised that the new NAND will deliver "demonstrable performance benefits" and serve as a launchpad for game-changing storage innovation across all markets.
Last week, Micron also released the new 9550 Gen5 drive, claiming it to be the fastest data center SSD. The device boasts a staggering 14 GB/sec of sequential read speeds and 10 GB/sec of write speeds. However, unlike the 2650, it uses the company's older Gen 8 232-layer NAND.