Production of the first PCIe 6.0 drives has started. Up to 28 GB/s
SSD drives are already extremely fast. This translates into, among other things, faster loading of programs and games, which in the case of the latter allows developers to let their imagination run wild when creating the world. However, the producers have not said the last word yet. Micron has started mass production of the first PCIe 6.0 SSD media.
Micron 9650, i.e. PCIe 6.0 SSD
The Micron 9650 series is available in E1.S and E3.S server formats. Unfortunately, these are not models designed for consumer use. The drives will be available in two variants: 9650 Pro and 9650 Max. The first one offers capacities of 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB and 30.72 TB, and the second one 6.4 TB, 12.8 TB and 25.6 TB.
Micron 9650 drives take advantage of the capabilities of the PCIe 6.0 x4 interface. The media achieves up to 28 GB/s sequential read, 14 GB/s write, 5400 KIOPS random read and 500 KIOPS random write. The 70/30 Pro mix reaches up to 1,100 KIOPS and the Max up to 1,500 KIOPS, with significantly higher TBW in the Max models (e.g. 140,160 TBW for 25.6 TB vs. 56,064 TBW for the 30.72 TB Pro).
Despite much higher performance, drives do not have higher energy consumption. This one is similar to the PCIe 5.0 models. It is also worth mentioning that Micron carriers support both air and liquid cooling. The manufacturer has no plans for consumer models yet, which is fully understandable because home desktops do not yet support the PCIe 6.0 standard.
