Micron has been making some noise over its Ballistix RAM, which has broken the 6GHz RAM record – a record previously held by G.Skill.
Micron has released its very first SSD, something that looks primed to take on Intel’s Optane SSDs in competition.
Optane SSDs are highly regarded since they came onto the market in April 2019.
Micron Makes A Firm Departure From Intel Partnership
It’s interesting to note that Micron’s first step onto the SSD scene was through a partnership with Intel – however, now they look like they are going it alone, working towards outperforming Intel’s Optane SSDs.
When Micron originally began creating SSDs, they were called the QuantX. Intel was a partner of Micron’s to create the 3D XPoint Storage Media. This is the tech that now powers all of Intel’s Optane series.
Parting ways with Intel, Micron seemingly decided to go up against them as direct competitors with their Micron X100 SSD. It looks like Micron has spent some time further developing the 3D XPoint technology to improve stability and achieve better speeds than even the highest tier of Intel’s Optane can offer.
Micron’s SSD Specs And Features
Micron recently broke another record with an impressive 9GB/s of sequential speeds. Additionally, when the QuantX is plugged into a PCIe 3.0 X16 it has a low latency of 8 microseconds.
Other fantastic features that Micron has packed in the SSD include:
- High-Performance Local Storage – this allows for brilliant 2.5 million input/output operations
- Ultra-Low latency – this surpasses both Intel’s Optane series and NAND’s flash SSDs latency
One potential downside to this SSD is the amount of power it’s going to need in order to work. As you can imagine, it’s not a small amount. The NVMe Drive has an 8-pin power connector, which means the Micron X100 is going to need to draw quite a bit of power from the motherboard and the external connector.
Where Can You Get Your Hands On Micron’s New SSD?
Now for the bad news. At the moment, Micron’s SSD is only going to be available for data centers – this is mainly due to it being Micron’s primary aim.
However, since Micron is in the process of developing its own 3D XPoint technology, there’s no reason not to expect a high-quality SSD to arrive on desktop PCs. We certainly hope to see this technology hit the main market. If, or when, it does and we have any more information on Micron’s SSDs, we will keep you posted.