Micron announces industry first PCIe Gen6 SSD, claims 26GB/s transfer speed

Micron has announced the development of the industry’s first PCIe Gen6 SSD. Claimed to be capable of “sequential read bandwidths of over 26GB/s,” the new SSDs are being prepared for data center operating partners.

The development of this super-fast new PCIe Gen6 data center SSD is claimed to be the world’s first by Micron in its press release. Unsurprisingly, in the current computing era, the turbo-charged storage tech is heralded as capable of addressing the mounting demands of AI processing.

The U.S. memory and storage tech giant says it will provide some kind of demonstration and/or showcase of a PCIe Gen6 SSD at the ongoing Flash Memory Summit 2024 (FMS 2024). This event kicks off today and ends on Thursday, Aug 8.

Micron isn’t very clear about the scope of its PCIe Gen6 SSD showcase. It claims that the new drives will be capable of delivering “sequential read bandwidths of over 26GB/s,” though, so we hope there will be some images or videos of systems reporting these speeds from Micron’s keynote, or from booth #107 on the show floor at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

For some context to the headlining 26GB/s SSD data transfer speeds, our frequently updated best SSDs of 2024 feature highlights the Crucial T705 as the current fastest consumer SSD available. It uses the PCIe 5.0 x4 interface to deliver sequential reads/writes of up to 14.5/12.7 GB/s. Using these values for comparison, the new PCIe Gen6 SSD from Micron is roughly 80% faster.

Hopefully, we will find out lots more about the Micron PCIe Gen6 SSD during the FMS 2024. As well as the booth #107 presence, we could hear and see more about it during Micron’s keynote. Also, there’s a Micron session dubbed “PCIe Gen6 electrical consideration and characterization for HVM SSDs” scheduled for Thursday.

Micron’s SVP and GM of the Compute and Networking Business Unit, Raj Narasimhan, will deliver a keynote at FMS 2024: The Future of Memory and Storage on Wednesday, Aug 7 at 11 am PT. The keynote is titled “Data is at the heart of AI: Micron memory and storage are fueling the AI revolution,” and will focus on how Micron’s advanced products address AI industry needs and enable faster and more power-efficient processing of vast data sets.