- First PCIe 6.0 SSD hits market for hyperscale AI environments
- Micron 9650 Targets AI Inference with Up to 28GBps Sequential Reads
- Storage Performance Shifts Towards Accelerator-Powered Data Pipelines in Hyperscale Data Centers
Micron has stated that its 9650 NVMe SSD has entered mass production, making it the first PCIe 6.0 SSD on the market, although the customer list is likely to be limited to hyperscalers and giant AI data center operators rather than everyday enterprise buyers.
The drive comes as storage architecture adapts to support AI inference workloads that need faster and more predictable data access.
PCIe 6.0 doubles the bandwidth compared to PCIe 5.0, and the Micron 9650 uses that margin to drive sequential read speeds of up to 28,000 MB/s. Sequential write performance reaches 14,000 MB/s, while random read performance stands at 5.5M IOPS and random writes at 900K IOPS.
Non-purpose storage
The focus of the 9650 NVMe SSD is not general-purpose storage. The unit is designed for environments where AI models operate continuously at scale, extracting data fast enough to avoid blockages in processes that rely on augmented recall generation and large context windows.
As data increasingly moves directly between storage and accelerators, higher PCIe bandwidth reduces CPU involvement and reduces transfer bottlenecks.
Energy efficiency plays into that equation because data centers can’t simply add performance without considering power limits.
Micron says the 9650 offers better performance per watt than PCIe 5.0 drives at similar power levels, including about twice the sequential read efficiency.
The idea is to increase useful work without taking the facilities beyond the existing energy limits.
Cooling requirements are also changing as storage performance increases along with GPUs. The Micron 9650 supports air- and liquid-cooled configurations for configurations where airflow alone is not sufficient to manage heat in dense AI racks.
Micron spent about 18 months validating interoperability across the PCIe 6.0 ecosystem, testing with switches, timers, and extended cable configurations before moving the unit into production.
The memory giant previously showed off the drive at several industry events, including DesignCon, FMS 2025, and SC25, to demonstrate how it works within entire systems rather than isolated tests.
With mass production underway and ongoing testing with hardware partners and major AI data center customers, Micron’s 9650 marks the first real step toward PCIe 6.0 storage for AI inference systems.
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