Micron, the first company to successfully secure 176-layer NAND flash mass production technology, has been at the forefront of the cutting-edge NAND competition by releasing a 176-layer SSD for consumers earlier this year and a 176-layer NAND SATA SSD for data center workloads.

Micron Technology (Micron) today announced the launch of the world’s first 176-layer NAND SATA solid-state drive (SSD) designed for data center workloads.

Micron claims that the 5400 SATA SSD is the most advanced SATA SSD available for data centers. Based on proven 11th generation SATA architecture, the Micron 5400 SSD supports a wide range of applications and delivers significantly improved performance over traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), extending the life of the SATA platform.

The Micron 5400 allows data center operators to continue using the SATA interface while installing new servers or upgrading existing servers. Customers can continue to get more value from SATA servers while still expecting enough performance to consume all of the typical network bandwidth, he explained.

The Micron 5400 SSD is based on the SATA architecture that has been proven by all major server OEMs. Approximately 20 million units have been shipped based on the SATA architecture and these products are widely used in data centers. The 5400 SSD can be used as an alternative to the lower capacity 10K and 7.2K SATA HDDs.

“We expect SATA enterprise customer SSD demand to remain strong through at least 2026, with volumes expected to reach 26 exabytes (EB) per year,” said Greg Wong, senior analyst at Forward Insights. “This announcement is a commitment from Micron and its OEM partners to support this important segment for years to come.”

Micron claims that users of the 5400 SSD can expect reduced downtime, longer lifespan per drive, and fewer failures than other leading SATA SSDs, building on its strengths in performance, reliability, and endurance. It boasts data sheet endurance that is approximately 50 percent higher than competing SSDs and approximately 50 percent higher than other leading SATA SSDs on the market.

By leveraging this additional endurance, customers can extend the life of their servers, improve ROI, and lower the TCO of SATA SSD-based platforms, the company emphasized. The 5400 SSD delivers best-in-class multi-use write performance, allowing you to take full advantage of its additional endurance.

“Reliable IT solutions are essential to every business,” said Senthil Reddy, senior director and general manager of the Server Business Unit, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. “Lenovo’s optimized servers leverage the proven architecture of Micron’s advanced SATA SSDs to help enterprises implement next-generation applications on their extensively deployed infrastructure.”

“Micron is uniquely positioned to lead the SATA market with 176-layer NAND,” said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron’s Data Center Storage business. “This cutting-edge NAND product enables long-term availability of SATA SSDs while scaling the architecture to accelerate and simplify customer qualification.”