Micron just did something absolutely wild. You see, the company rolled out a fresh lineup of SSDs that doesn’t just raise the bar, it grabs the bar, melts it down, and builds a whole new one. We’re looking at the world’s first PCIe Gen6 SSD, an insane 245TB drive, and a new Gen5 option that keeps latency low and performance sky-high. Honestly, it’s so cool to see the future now.
Everything in this lineup is built using Micron’s latest G9 3D NAND. That’s how they’re pulling off these ridiculous specs. The flagship here is the Gen6 9650, and it rips through workloads with up to 28GB/s reads and 5.5 million IOPS. It’s designed to keep GPUs constantly fed, which is perfect for AI training and inference. There’s even a liquid-cooled version, which tells you exactly who this is made for. These aren’t consumer toys.
Then there’s the Gen5 6600 ION. It’s a single drive in the size of a deck of cards holds 122TB, and Micron says a 245TB version is coming next year. That’s just absurd in the best way. Compared to spinning rust, it’s not even a contest. The 6600 uses less space, less energy, and gives you way more capacity. If you’re building out an AI data lake, this thing can collapse your entire setup into a fraction of the footprint.
For people running mixed workloads or just need solid performance without all the flash, the 7600 is a Gen5 option worth looking at. It keeps latency below 1ms and still pumps out 12GB/s reads and 7GB/s writes. This one’s ideal for inference or database-heavy environments where speed and consistency matter more than massive capacity.
Micron is handling everything in-house on these drives. From the controller to the NAND to the firmware, it’s all theirs. That helps with supply chain reliability and lets them lock down security features tighter than ever. We’re talking full self-encryption, firmware attestation, and hardware root of trust. It’s the kind of detail that gets overlooked until it really matters.
All of this is real. These aren’t vaporware announcements. The 9650 and 7600 are shipping to customers now in a variety of form factors. The 122TB version of the 6600 ION is landing later this quarter, and the 245TB version hits sometime in 2026.
This has me seriously excited. We’re not just talking about faster storage. We’re looking at drives that change how you build a data center. Less space, less heat, less waste, and way more performance. It feels like someone hit fast forward on the future, and honestly, I love it.
