Micron unveils SCM-lite SSD – A third of the performance, a fifth of the cost

Micron unveiled two SSDs the day prior to this: the primary was once the Micron 6500 ION and the second one is the XTR, which enhances the previous and goals at offering, in Micron’s phrases, an reasonably priced selection to “pricey” garage category reminiscence (SCM) SSD. Micron is obviously aiming at its former spouse, Intel, and its now defunct Optane era which used three-D X-Level which was once evolved in partnership with Micron.

Key to Micron’s aspirations are two options: the XTR is 80% less expensive than Intel’s Optane at an identical capacities and delivers as much as 35% of the random DWPD (power written consistent with day) numbers. That’s a staggering 35 random drives written consistent with day (as much as 67TB written consistent with day for the 1.92TB type).

Intel’s Optane DC P5800X (opens in new tab) (1.6TB) recently sells for round $3000 and has a 100 DWPD staying power or round 160TB). That will put the cost of the 1.92TB XTR SSD at $600 which makes it a slightly tasty product; a smaller 960TB SKU may be to be had.

The 2 drives also are optimized for write efficiency and staying power slightly than low latency which was once some of the explanation why Optane did so smartly. Micron quotes learn/write latency at 60/15ms respectively, considerably upper than its Intel rival.

It’s all concerning the pairing

Micron suggests pairing the XTR with its personal just-released 6500 ION. The reason in the back of that is that the XTR, whilst no longer considerably sooner than the 6500 ION has a miles upper staying power (by way of an order of magnitude) as this can be a single-level mobile SSD slightly than a triple-level mobile one. As such, it may be used as a smaller cache power, which makes it perfect for write buffering, logging, journaling, OLTP, and different write-intensive workloads.

Intel introduced that it was once getting out of the SCM trade in July 2022 so there’s an opening within the SCM marketplace that many will likely be having a look to fill. Intel has created call for for a product that many will likely be having a look to fill will SCM-class product, both within the type of tremendous speedy SLC-based SSD or DRAM/NAND hybrids.

As Justin Emerson, essential era evangelist at Natural Garage, places it, most likely the way forward for SCM is much less of a class and extra of a spectrum, with many alternative choices no longer being positioned in a selected stratum however slightly a continuum. For Micron, some of the two backers of three-D XPoint, the longer term is obviously SLC-based.