AI has changed the face of computing hardware so much since it started gaining popularity. With its stranglehold on just about every conversation around tech its clearly the current driving force. Now, more and more, manufacturers are looking to find ways to optimise better for AI, be it something like Nvidia’s DLSS4 optimised series of graphics cards or Micron’s new lineup of SSDs designed to work best with data centre AI.
The new lineup from Micron is the first to use the brand’s newest G9 NAND node in order to optimise these drives for AI data centre usage. It consists of the 9650 SSD, the 6600 ION SSD, and the 7600 SSD all designed to tackle different problems AI computing can come up against.
None of these are particularly interesting for us regular PC gamers, but the move in technology is cool, especially when you consider that all of these are boasting marked power usage improvements over older models.
The 9650 SSD is a PCIe 6th gen drive that boasts 28 GB/s sequential read and 14 GB/s write speeds. I like to sit here and imagine transfering data at those speeds and it makes me a little giddy. These are said to be the fastest of its kind, and should help speed up large enterprise tasks like AI training and accessing large language models. It’s also said to be much more energy efficient than its predecessor, so hopefully we can cut down on some of the environmental costs of AI.
Next on the list is the Micron 6600 ION SSD, a massively scalable storage solution. These can come in up to 245TBs in a single drive, and the 122TB version is only about the size of a deck of playing cards. These are AI infrastructure SSDs designed for sifting through and storing large data sets and building huge data lakes to wade out into.
Lastly, the 7600 SSD is another PCIe based drive but this time only a Gen5. These are striking a mix between affordability and more a stoic mix of performance, low latency, and predictable reliability. Again we are seeing a strong focus on performance per power over previous offerings while still pushing the speed to get through modern AI workloads.
Again, these data centre style solutions are very unlikely to ever be things that suit your gaming needs, but it’s an interesting direction to witness. AI powered tech is literally being fought over by countries with sanctions being levied against China from the U.S.
Meanwhile, the newest gaming PCs are starting to use AI tech more and more to deliver better framerates than ever before, or to tell us we aren’t playing games when we are. It won’t be long before gamers are being sold our own AI optimised SSDs, though hopefully they’ll be a little more affordable than these data centre forefathers.