Micron Technology (MU Quick QuoteMU - Free Report) recently released the Micron 6500 ION NVMe solid-state drive (“SSD”) and the Micron XTR NVMe SSD to reduce operating costs and advance storage efficiency of the data centers. The new rollouts intend to enable huge storage, control costs and improve data center sustainability for data center operators by reducing power consumption.

Micron 6500 ION SSD

The world’s first data center NVMe SSD with more than 200 NAND layers, Micron 6500 ION is a high-capacity SSD that offers a superior value over the competing QLC-based drive by providing best-in-class performance.

It comes at a comparable price point versus the competing QLC SSD2, thus lowering upfront purchase costs and annual operating expenses by reducing power/cooling and server/software license costs through chassis consolidation. Micron’s 6500 ION offers 34% better average read latency, 58% faster sequential writes, 62% more 4KB random read IOPS4 and 10 times better 4KB random write endurance than its alternative QLC-SSD.

The 6500 ION delivers TLC performance and QLC-like cost due to Micron's 232-layer technology node leadership. It delivers storage that lasts longer, outperforming and outlasting the competing QLC SSD and saturating 400 GbE networks with ease. When compared with QLC technology, it ensures up to a 20% reduction in power consumption aiding enterprises reduce carbon footprint. Further, the SSD features Federal Information and Processing Standards ASIC certifiability and complies with the Trade Agreement Act.

The Micron 6500 ION demonstrates higher peak performance and 99.99% read latency than the QLC SSD for Cassandra NoSQL database. For the Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark Workload C, its peak performance is up to 2.6 times better. Further, it can deliver huge storage capacity and workload results for WEKA software-defined storage. In a six-node cluster configuration, the WEKA cluster with 48 Micron 6500 ION SSDs delivers up to 5.2 million IOPS and up to 112GB/s throughput per node while providing nearly 1.5PB to the cluster. Such improvements across a broad range of real-world workloads significantly advance data center performances.

The 30.72TB capacity Micron 6500 ION SSD is available in the U.3 (15mm) and E1.L (9.5mm) form factor.

Micron XTR SSD

The Micron XTR SSD is ideal for write-intensive use cases like caching tiers, write buffering, logging and journaling and online transaction processing workloads. Combined with Micron 6500 ION SSD, the Micron XTR optimizes storage workloads with minimal investment against storage class memory-based solutions. It features up to 35 random drive writes per day (DWPD) and up to 60 sequential DWPD, 44% less power consumption and 20% more usable capacity compared with other conventional SSDs.

Both the Micron XTR and Micron 6500 ION SSDs perform similarly in a Microsoft SQL Server Analytics workload testing. When the Micron XTR and 6500 ION SSDs are combined, Micron 6500 ION offers primary storage to meet the SQL Server performance and capacity needs, while the Micron XTR enables the endurance needed for the write-intensive operations in SQL Server.

The Micron XTR SSD is available in the U.3 (15mm) form factor in both 960GB and 1.92TB capacities.

Micron is witnessing growing demand for memory chips from cloud-computing providers and acceleration in 5G cellular network adoptions. Rising mix of high-value solutions, 5G adoption in Internet of Things devices and wireless infrastructure, enhancement in customer engagement and improvement in cost structure are driving the company’s growth.

For second-quarter fiscal 2023, Micron reported revenues of $3.69 billion, which plunged 53% year over year and missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.76 billion. Rapidly weakening consumer demand and substantial customer inventory adjustments across end markets amid macroeconomic uncertainty were the main reasons behind the dismal quarterly performance. The consensus mark for the company’s third-quarter fiscal 2023 revenues is pegged at $3.69 billion, suggesting a further 57.3% decline.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Micron currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Shares of MU have lost 10.3% over the past year.

Some top-ranked stocks from the broader Computer and Technology sector are Meta Platforms (META Quick QuoteMETA - Free Report) , Momo (MOMO Quick QuoteMOMO - Free Report) and ServiceNow (NOW Quick QuoteNOW - Free Report) . While Meta Platforms and Momo sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), ServiceNow carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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