U.S. Semiconductor maker Micron Technology's (NASDAQ : MU) shares were on a heater yesterday after it unveiled its new 4600 PCIe Gen5 NVMe Solid State Drive (SSD) - the company’s first Gen5 drive and designed to allow for advanced performance AI models, gamers, creators and professionals.
It is designed to double the performance of its predecessor, the G9 TLC NAND, and comes with super fast read (14.5 GB/s) and write speeds (12.0 GB/s).
The new SSD is created with cutting edge AI applications in mind, reducing model load times by up to 62% in comparison to previous generations and reckons uptake of the Gen5 model will grow rapidly in 2025 and 2026.
Micron vice president and general manager for client storage Prasad Alluri said it will be capable of loading large language models in less than one second.
“As AI inference runs locally on the PC, the transition to Gen5 SSDs addresses the increased need for higher performance and energy efficiency,” Allrui said.
The Gen 5 SSD will be compatible with leading-edge platforms to ensure seamless integration for PC OEMs, with up to 38% better performance than Gen4 SSDs and up to 11% better scores compared to its Gen5 competitors.
Lenovo principal engineer Takashi Sugawara praised the 4600 for its low-temperature soldering technology, allowing the SSD to not overheat and adoption of sustainable practices.
“As a pioneer in LTS technology, Lenovo has been collaborating with Micron in the pursuit of reducing the amount of energy consumed in the SSD manufacturing process,” Sugawara said.
News of the US$119 billion market-capped Micron’s upcoming Gen 5 SSD caught a lot of market attention in trade on Tuesday, pushing the share price up 7.31% to swap for US$106.79 by close.
