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Micron begins mass production of industry's first PCIe Gen6 SSD
Friday, February 13, 2026 at 06:10 PM
Micron has started mass production of its 9650 SSD, which represents the industry's first PCIe Gen6 storage solution achieving speeds up to 28 GB/s.
Context
Micron has officially commenced mass production of its 9650 SSD, marking the commercial debut of the industry’s first PCIe Gen6 storage solution. Designed specifically for AI-driven data centers, the drive delivers unprecedented sequential read speeds of up to 28 GB/s and random read performance of 5.5 million IOPS. By doubling the bandwidth of previous Gen5 technology, the 9650 SSD effectively eliminates data bottlenecks that often leave high-end GPUs idle during intensive training and inference tasks.
The transition to PCIe Gen6 is a critical milestone for AI infrastructure, as it provides the throughput necessary to feed next-generation accelerators like Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture. Beyond raw speed, the Micron 9650 offers up to 67% better energy efficiency for random reads compared to Gen5 predecessors, a vital metric for scaling power-constrained data centers. Currently being qualified by major OEMs, the drive is available in both air-cooled and liquid-cooled form factors to support the thermal demands of high-density server environments.
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