Micron 9400 NVMe PCIe Gen4 Data Center U.3 Up to 30TB SSD Available from Channel Partners and OEMs

Micron Technology, Inc. announced the 9400 NVMe SSD is in volume production and available from channel partners and to OEMs for use in servers requiring storage performance.

The 9400 SSD is designed to manage the most demanding data center workloads, particularly in AI training, ML and HPC applications. The drive delivers a 30.72TB of storage capacity, superior workload performance vs. the competition, and 77% improved IO/s.⁽¹⁾ This SSD is a fast PCIe Gen4 data center U.3 drive shipping ⁽²⁾ and delivers low latency at all capacity points.⁽³⁾

“High performance, capacity and low latency are critical features for enterprises seeking to maximize their investments in AI/ML and supercomputing systems,” said Alvaro Toledo, VP and GM, data center storage. “Thanks to its industry-leading 30TB capacity and stunning performance with over 1 million IO/s in mixed workloads, the Micron 9400 SSD packs larger datasets into each server and accelerates ML training, which equips users to squeeze more out of their GPUs.”

30TB capacity maximizes storage density
The 9400 SSD’s capacity of 30TB doubles the maximum capacity of the company’s prior-generation NVMe SSDs. A standard 2-rack-unit 24-drive server loaded with 30.72TB 9400 SSDs provides total storage of 737TB/server. By doubling capacity per SSD, Micron is enabling enterprises to store the same amount of data in half as many servers.

This maximizes IT resources and budgets by reclaiming valuable rack space and reducing maintenance costs and time required to manage hardware – freeing up IT teams to innovate. The capacity is designed to handle modern, data-intensive workloads while providing the room to scale as needed.

Storage performance excels in range of environments from AI to cloud
The 9400 SSD sets a new performance standard for PCIe Gen4 storage by delivering 1.6 million IO/s for 100% 4K random reads.

This SSD’s capacity and performance enable larger datasets and accelerate epoch time, the total number of iterations of data in 1 cycle for training ML models – leading to more efficient utilization of GPUs.

While many SSDs are designed for pure read or write use cases, the 9400 was designed with real-world applications in mind. Mixed workloads are prevalent in many data center applications, including caching, online transaction processing, high-frequency trading, AI, and performance-focused databases requiring performance.

For mixed read and write workloads, 9400 SSD outperforms competition, providing:

71% higher IO/s for 90% read and 10% write workloads, surpassing 1 million IO/s ⁽⁴⁾
69% higher IO/s for 70% read and 30% write workloads, surpassing 940,000 IO/s ⁽⁴⁾

In testing scenarios, the 9400 SSD excelled in mixed workload performance compared vs. competitors’ performance NVMe SSDs.

Results show:

For RocksDB, a storage database renowned for its high performance and used for latency-sensitive, user-sensitive applications like spam detection or storing viewer history, the 9400 delivered up to 23% higher performance and up to 34% higher workload responsiveness ⁽⁵⁾
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. Aerospike Database underpins time-critical web applications like fraud detection, recommendation engines, real-time payment processing and stock trading – meaning the 9400 can deliver faster results for these time-sensitive use cases ⁽⁵⁾
For NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect storage which enables a direct memory access data transfer path between GPU memory and storage, the 9400 beat the competition by delivering 25% better performance in a busy system with compute-bound tasks – a critical improvement for AI environments ⁽⁶⁾
For multi-tenant cloud architectures, the 9400 delivers more than double the overall performance of a competitor’s performance-focused SSD and up to 62% better response time ⁽⁶⁾

“As the world’s most innovative organizations continue to adopt cloud and digital-first strategies, Weka and our partners are focused on removing obstacles to data-driven innovation,” said Liran Zvibel, co-founder and CEO, WekaIO, Inc. “High-performance, high-capacity storage like the Micron 9400 SSD provides the critical underlying technology to accelerate access to data and time to insights that drive tremendous business value.”

Improved energy efficiency reduces environmental impact
A major consideration for data center operators is the combination of workload performance and the amount of energy consumed. Higher energy efficiency means there is more throughput for the energy consumed to complete the work. The 9400 SSD’s 77% better IO/s/W reduces power consumption and therefore operational expenses, carbon footprint and environmental impact.

“Supermicro designs innovative servers that provide maximum performance, configurability, and power savings to tackle the growing customer demand for increased capacity and efficiency,” said Wally Liaw, co-founder and senior VPnbusiness development, Super Micro Computer, Inc. “The Micron 9400 SSD delivers an immense storage volume of over 30TB into every drive while simultaneously supporting optimized workloads and faster system throughput for advanced applications.”

Various capacities offer enterprises flexible deployment
The firm’s 9400 SSD is available in a U.3 form factor that is backwards-compatible with U.2 sockets and comes in capacities ranging from 6.4TB to 30.72TB. These options provide data center operators the flexibility to deploy the most energy efficient storage while matching their workloads with the right blend of performance, capacity and endurance.⁽⁷⁾This versatile SSD is built to manage critical workloads whether in on-premises server farms or in a multi-tenant shared cloud infrastructure, and can be flexibly deployed in hyperscale, cloud, data center, OEM and system integrator designs.

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⁽¹⁾ Measured in IO/s/W and compared against Micron’s previous generation SSD, the 9300 NVMe SSD. The Micron 9300 SSD delivered 0.85 million IO/s per 16W (0.0531 million IO/s/W) as compared against 1.6 million IO/s per 17W (0.0941 million IO/s/W), which equals a 77% improvement.
⁽²⁾ The Micron 9400 NVMe SSD leads in at least 3 out of 4 corners in 4-corners performance testing (namely random read, random write, sequential read, sequential write) vs. competitive U.2/U.3 SSDs from major suppliers having over 10% market share as per Forward Insights’ SSD Insights 4Q22 report.
⁽³⁾ The Micron 9400 SSD has 5x9s latencies that are less than 420µs for 4k random reads. These 4k random reads are greater than 1.2 million IO/s at a queue depth of 128.
⁽⁴⁾ Comparison vs. the data center NVMe SSD from the next leading competitor, based on data center market share data as noted in Forward Insights’ SSD Supplier Status Q2/22 report. Performance measured using 7.68TB SSDs at a queue depth of 256 with FIO (additional details on FIO are available)
⁽⁵⁾ Compared vs. 3 performance-focused NVMe SSDs from competitors