There has been a surge in the release of data center products designed to handle artificial intelligence (AI) learning, machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Semiconductor company Micron Technology (hereinafter referred to as Micron) announced on the 9th that its high-performance data center SSD, the 'Micron 9400 NVMe SSD', has entered mass production.

The Micron 9400 is designed to handle the most demanding data center workloads, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing (HPC) applications. The drive boasts 30.72 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity, high workload performance, and a 77 percent improvement in IOPS (input/output operations per second).

“High performance, high capacity, and low latency are critical attributes for enterprises looking to maximize their investments in AI/ML and supercomputing systems,” said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron’s data center storage.

“With industry-leading 30TB of capacity and incredible performance at 1 million IOPS for mixed workloads, the Micron 9400 SSD will allow us to load more datasets onto each server, accelerate machine learning training and enable users to maximize GPU utilization,” he said.

With the rise of data-intensive industries, there is a growing market demand for maximum storage density. The Micron 9400 SSD offers 30TB of storage, doubling the maximum capacity of previous-generation NVMe SSDs.

A standard 2U 24-drive server with 30.72TB Micron 9400 SSDs would provide a total storage of 737TB per server. Micron has doubled the capacity per SSD, allowing the same amount of data to be stored in half the servers.

This frees up valuable rack space and reduces maintenance costs and time spent on hardware management, maximizing the utility of IT staff and budget, freeing up IT teams to innovate. This exceptional capacity is designed to handle today’s data-intensive workloads while scaling as needed.

It is also important to demonstrate storage performance in various environments, from AI to the cloud. The Micron 9400 SSD sets a new performance standard for PCIe Gen 4 storage, handling 100% 4K random reads at 1.6 million IOPS.

The capacity and performance of the Micron 9400 enables larger datasets and more efficient use of GPUs by accelerating the total number of times data is iterated over in a single cycle when training machine learning models.

While many SSDs are designed to be read-only or write-only, the Micron 9400 is designed with real-world use in mind. Mixed workloads are prevalent in many data applications, including caching, online transaction processing, high-frequency trading, artificial intelligence, and performance-intensive databases that require extreme performance.

The Micron 9400 outperforms the competition by delivering 1 million IOPS4 with 71% more IOPS for 90% read and 10% write workloads, and 940,000 IOPS4 with 69% more IOPS for 70% read and 30% write workloads.

Additionally, in test scenarios, the Micron 9400 SSD was claimed to perform better in mixed workload processing compared to high-performance NVMe SSDs from competitors.

For RocksDB, a high-performance storage database known for use in latency- and user-sensitive applications such as spam detection or storing viewer history, the 9400 showed up to 23% higher performance and 34% higher workload responsiveness5.

For Aerospike Database, an open-source NoSQL database optimized for flash storage, the Micron 9400 demonstrated up to 2.1x higher peak performance and superior responsiveness. The Aerospike database is the foundation for time-sensitive web applications such as fraud detection, recommendation engines, real-time payment processing, and stock trading.

“As the world’s most innovative companies continue to embrace cloud and digital-first strategies, WEKA and our partners are focused on removing the barriers to data-driven innovation,” said Liran Zvibel, WEKA co-founder and CEO. “High-performance, high-capacity storage like the Micron 9400 SSD provides the foundational technology to accelerate data access and accelerate time to insight, driving tremendous business value.”

Another important consideration for data center operators is workload performance and energy usage. Energy efficiency means more throughput for the amount of energy used to complete a task. The Micron 9400 can reduce power consumption with 77% more IOPS per watt, thus reducing operating costs, carbon footprint, and environmental impact.

“Supermicro designs innovative servers that deliver maximum performance, configurations and power efficiency to meet customer demands for more capacity and efficiency,” said Wally Liaw, co-founder and senior vice president of business development at Supermicro. “The Micron 9400 SSD provides a massive storage volume of over 30TB per drive while supporting advanced applications with optimized workloads and faster system throughput.”