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BOISE, Idaho, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), today announced it is now shipping the 245TB capacity Micron® 6600 ION SSD, the world's highest capacity commercially available SSD. The drive marks a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers and is designed to support AI, cloud, enterprise and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation AI data lakes and cloud-scale file and object storage. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION E3.L requires 82% fewer racks to achieve equivalent raw storage capacity compared to HDD-based deployments.1 Built with Micron® G9 QLC NAND that is at least one generation ahead of any competing QLC used in data center SSDs, the 245TB Micron 6600 ION redefines high-capacity data center storage.2 Customers can now store and process significantly more data in far less space, while reducing power and cooling demands without sacrificing the performance required for large-scale, data-intensive workloads.
"AI workloads are driving massive growth in shared data, continuing the shift of data center storage share from HDDs toward SSDs. With 245TB in a single SSD, the Micron 6600 ION makes solid state storage the clear choice for modern data centers," said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and general manager of Micron's Core Data Center Business Unit. "This breakthrough capacity gives data center operators a critical new lever to improve rack-level total cost of ownership, especially as power availability becomes a defining constraint for AI infrastructure scale."
"Rapid AI dataset growth is shifting storage economics from individual drives to rack-level efficiency," said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president of solid state drives and enabling technologies at IDC. "Operators need more usable capacity per rack while staying within strict power and cooling constraints. Micron's 245TB drives deliver the density required to scale AI data pipelines without increasing data center footprints. Predictable performance, energy efficiency and higher capacity are essential to building cost-effective AI infrastructure."
New economics for data center storage at quarter-petabyte scale
The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD is available in both U.2 and E3.L form factors for massive storage capacity. The smaller physical footprint and increased capacity per drive enables operational and data center management simplicity and reduces failure points and maintenance needs.
Power consumption is equally transformative. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consumes up to 30 watts (W) at maximum power, only half the power consumed of a comparable-capacity HDD deployment.3 Additionally, these energy efficiency gains can support data center sustainability initiatives by helping reduce energy usage, cooling requirements and carbon emissions — key priorities for global operators under increasing environmental and cost pressures.
"AI workloads are pushing data center capacity to the limit, and when you can fit significantly more storage into every rack, the math changes: less power, less floor space, less operational overhead," said Travis Vigil, senior vice president, ISG product management, Dell Technologies. "That's what 245TB drives in Dell storage systems for AI will deliver. It's a meaningful reduction in total cost of ownership for customers building out AI and large-scale data center environments."
Setting new performance and efficiency benchmarks for sustainable scale
The Micron 6600 ION SSD is built to support extreme-capacity deployments demonstrating superior AI workload performance and energy efficiency at scale versus data centers utilizing HDDs. Testing in Micron labs demonstrates dramatic gains in energy efficiency, throughput and latency versus HDD‑based systems:
- For AI workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION provided up to 84 times better energy efficiency, 8.6 times faster AI preprocessing and 3.4 times better ingest throughput, with up to 29 times lower latency.4
- Object storage workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION demonstrated up to 435 times better throughput per watt, 96 times faster time to first byte and 58 times better aggregate throughput.5
At scale, 1.9 times more energy is required for an HDD deployment versus 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSDs in a 1EB deployment.6 These at-scale energy efficiency gains can translate into measurable sustainability impacts, such as:
- CO2 savings equivalent to the amount of CO2 absorbed by over 9,000 mature trees per year7
- 438 metric tons (MT) per year of CO2 reduction8
- 921 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year of energy saved6
- HVAC cooling savings of over 3.14 billion British thermal units (Btu) per year9
The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD will be on display in the Micron booth (#226) at Dell Tech World, May 18 – 21, 2026. Stop by to see the Micron 6600 ION in a 40-slot Dell PowerEdge server optimized for data lake storage.
Additional resources:
- 6600 ION SSD webpage
- Data center SSD webpage
- Micron 6600 ION SSD image gallery
- 6600 ION SSD product brief
- Space and power economics
- Rethinking storage foundations
- Scaling object storage
- Enabling AI performance and power efficiency
- AI data lake building blocks
- AI data extraction, transformation & loading
About Micron Technology, Inc.
Micron Technology, Inc., is an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions, transforming how the world uses information to enrich life for all. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron delivers a rich portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR memory and storage products. Every day, the innovations that our people create fuel the data economy, enabling advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and compute-intensive applications that unleash opportunities — from the data center to the intelligent edge and across the client and mobile user experience. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), visit micron.com.
© 2026 Micron Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Information, products and/or specifications are subject to change without notice. Micron, the Micron logo and all other Micron trademarks are the property of Micron Technology, Inc. NVIDIA and the NVIDIA logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Micron Product and Technology Communications Contact:
Mengxi Liu Evensen
+1 (408) 444-2276
productandtechnology@micron.com
Micron Investor Relations Contact:
Satya Kumar
+1 (408) 450-6199
satyakumar@micron.com
1 The decrease in rack space is calculated as 720 drives x 245.76TB SSDs per 36U for 176.9PB capacity total per rack, compared to 720 drives x 44TB HDDs per 36U for 31.7PB capacity total per rack, theoretical maximum. The difference is that 5.6 times more rack space is needed for HDDs.
2 SSD and NAND comparisons are based on published data from the top five competitive suppliers of OEM data center SSDs by revenue as of March 2026, as per Forward Insights analyst report "SSD Supplier Status Q1/26."
3 The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD operates at 30W peak power, and 44TB HDDs at 10W peak power each. 44TB HDD power information is not available, comparisons are based on 36TB/32TB HDD peak power. Source: exos-ds2046.1-2512-en_us.pdf
4 The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consistently delivered higher throughput than an array of data center HDDs for AI extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), with lower latency, superior power efficiency and better scalable concurrency as tested in Micron Engineering labs with a single 245 TB Micron 6600 ION SSD against an array of 16x 16TB data center HDDs from a single HDD manufacturer.
5 MinIO object storage workload testing based on testing in Micron labs using the Warp S3 benchmark with 4MB objects with a single Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD against an array of 16x 16TB data center HDDs presented as a RAID-0/JBOD array from a single HDD manufacturer.
6 The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD operates at 30W peak power, and 44TB HDDs at 10W peak power each. 4,069 SSDs and 22,727 HDDs are required for 1EB of storage. Energy savings are calculated as the difference between the two technologies running at maximum power for one year. 44TB HDD power information is not available, so power data is based on 32TB/36TB HDD peak power and assumes 44TB HDD power consumption will be equal to or higher than 32TB/36TB HDD. Source: exos-ds2046.1-2512-en_us.pdf
7 In one year, one tree can absorb 231KG of CO2. Tree absorption information source: The Power of One Tree – The Very Air We Breathe | Home
8 Assumes 1EB storage, all HDD and all SSD drawing 100% of their assumed or rated power 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. HDD power consumed: 1,990,973 kWh (10 watts per HDD), while 245TB 6600 ION SSD power consumption is 1,069,596 kWh (30 watts per SSD), for a difference of 921,377 kWh Based on all energy from carbon/fossil-based sources. CO2 reduction information source: Emissions – Global Energy & CO2 Status Report – Analysis – IEA
9 HVAC cooling savings based on 1W = 3.412 Btu/h.
