Micron launches first 176-layer NAND SSD

Flash memory giant Micron Technology has launched a range of data center SSDs based on the latest 176-layer NAND chips. The new SSDs deliver up to 1 million random read IOPS across higher capacity drives, and promise latency under 2 milliseconds for 99.9999% of reads in mixed, random workloads.

The 7450 series drives are available in capacities from 400GB to 15.36TB, multiple form factors, and three different interfaces – M.2, U.3, and the relatively new E1.S. The 7450 series includes PCIe Gen4 SSDs for almost any application and any server.

Some of the new drives can serve as drop-in replacements for 2.5-inch spinning disk, some have been designed for maximum storage density per server; there are a few heatsink options to enable different approaches to cooling, and an M.2 device intended to serve as a boot drive, equipped with power-loss protection. Meanwhile, E 1.S is an emerging flash form factor that’s a favourite among the hyperscalers, a descendant of the unusual ‘ruler’ design proposed by Intel back in 2018.

The 7450 drives have been evaluated by the Open Compute Project (OCP). Nevertheless, the devices have received endorsement from Meta, the company that established, and remains one of the main driving forces behind the open-source hardware initiative.

Alvaro Toledo, VP and GM of data center storage at Micron, said, “Six nines, as you hear in the industry, for common mixed, random workloads, that is a super critical to the hyperscalers of the world that require consistent latency. But also, for traditional data centers that are running databases. As you are running queries on your storage media, you're always bound by the slowest operation, right? This is a time when the industry needs it most. In the era of semiconductor shortages, the ability to get more more bits out of the wafer became super critical. And we're very proud to finally be able to do that.”