Micron Technology has launched its new solid state drive (SSD), dubbed the Micron 2550 NVMe SSDm.
The company claims the 2550 is the world’s first SSD to ship with NAND, a type of non-volatile storage technology that requires no power to hold data, with more than 200 layers.
The US manufacturer has earmarked the new drive for use in mainstream laptops and desktops, claiming it can enable faster, more responsive applications across gaming, consumer, and consumer hardware.
What do users get?
Micron claims that the new drive will enable sequential read performance of up to 5GB per second as well as sequential write performance of up to 4GB per second, which it says is 1.4 and 1.3 times faster than the previous generation SSD, respectively.
In addition, the manufacturer claims that Micron 2550 SSD technology, including “predictive cache optimization,” can improve user experiences.
The current business environment has not been the best for Micron’s NAND manufacturing process.
Total NAND manufacturing revenue decreased 24.3% quarter over quarter, according to the research (Opens in a new tab) Market intelligence firm TrendForce.
Micron reported a 26.2% decline in revenue to $1.69 billion from the second quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2022.
The malaise of the broader industry, however, hasn’t stopped many manufacturers from announcing ambitious new NAND products.
South Korean manufacturer SK hynix announced a new memory chip at the Flash Memory Summit conference in Santa Clara.
The new chip, which is expected to enter mass production in the first half of 2023, will ship “the world’s first 238-layer 512GB 238-layer TLC 4D NAND,” breaking Micron’s world record for most layers in a NAND drive.