Micron has a new mainstream data center SSD dubbed the Micron 7500. This is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD with up to 15.36TB of capacity that is designed to fit somewhere between the high performance and high capacity segments.
Micron 7500 Mainstream PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD Launched
Starting with the drive, this is using a Micron controller ASIC and Micron’s 232-layer NAND. It has two main flavors a “PRO” which is the standard 1 drive write per day (DWPD) trim and the “MAX” which is the 3 DWPD trim. Realistically, these are similar drives just the MAX has more over-provisioning which in turns means lower capacities.
The U.3 15mm drives support features like NVMe 2.0 OCP 2.0 firmware sub 1ms latency for the 99.9999% QoS and more. Perhaps the more interesting bit is the reason for the smaller 800GB, 960GB, 1.6TB, and 1.92TB drives. These are smaller than the heart of the market right now, and significantly so. The reason companies are still making these low-capacity PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs is for legacy drive bays where there is a need for lower-capacity drives to match previous generations of capacities.
When we discuss the mainstream SSD, this is not the Micron 6500 ION 30.72TB drive which is more focused on capacity.
Instead, this is the mainstream segment for Micron which means not the highest-capacity or the highest-performance, but somewhere between. Here is the current portfolio.
Something fun to note is that the 32TB Micron 9400 Pro performance PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD also has 30TB class capacities making it both higher capacity and performance. That is really telling on the market that Micron is targeting. Here is the video for that one.
Here are the 4K random read performance figures. This is more of a read-focused drive with perhaps more write focus than the Micron 6500 Ion.
Here is Micron’s slide on real-world workloads.
It is pretty standard that each manufacturer says that its drive is better than its competition. Perhaps the better way to think of this as a drive priced on a $/TB basis and performance basis between the 9400 Pro and the 6500 Ion drives that we reviewed.
Final Words
Overall, this is a drive to look out for in the market. We are always excited to have more drives. It is being launched at a time when we have seen other drive manufacturers pull SSD launches given the state of the market, even ones that we had already tested ready for review. It is great to see Micron work on its vision of having its own ASIC and firmware features that it rolls out to its entire line of drives.
Now, hopefully we can get a pair to test.
