Today Micron Technology, Inc. began shipping its 5210 ION SSD, what it calls the industry’s first SSD built on revolutionary quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology. First unveiled earlier this year at the company’s investor event, the latest SSDs will provide 33% more bit density than TLC, aiming to tackle the density normally reserved for HDDs. This will bring much better performance and better density to the enterprise markets that rely on spinning media still.
Today Micron Technology, Inc. began shipping its 5210 ION SSD, what it calls the industry’s first SSD built on revolutionary quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology. First unveiled earlier this year at the company’s investor event, the latest SSDs will provide 33% more bit density than TLC, aiming to tackle the density normally reserved for HDDs. This will bring much better performance and better density to the enterprise markets that rely on spinning media still.
HDDs have been the go to when organizations need capacity at an affordable price. However, HDDs are hitting their upper limit of performance, barring some new technology like multi actuator. Flash provides much better performance and increasingly better density. Another part of the equation is that workloads have evolved to need the performance of flash. Flash can better be leveraged for data insights and analytics as well. Micron is using its QLC NAND (that it states can hit 1 terabit with its next-generation 64-layer 3D NAND structure) to optimize performance and capacity.
The new 5210 ION SSD is a 2.5” (7mm) form factor drive with capacities ranging from 1.92TB to 7.68TB. This will put much more density and performance in a 2U chassis compared to a 3.5” HDD, reducing sever sprawl by consolidating rack and reducing power and cooling demands. The new drives are made for read-intensive cloud storage needs such as AI, Big Data, business intelligence, content delivery and database systems. Micron believes that the new offering will complement its existing storage portfolio.
The 5210 SSD leveraged the proven architecture of the 5200 series of SATA SSDs, simplifying the qualification process by using the known architecture. The 5210 will deliver the full enterprise feature set of Micron’s SATA SSDs. Users will be able to customize the drives (endurance and write performance) to their needs through Micron’s Flex Capacity feature.
Availability
The Micron 5210 ION SSD is shipping now to select partners and customers with broad market availability expected this fall.
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