Micron 5210 ION Enterprise SATA QLC Up to 7.68TB 2.5-Inch SSD

Micron Technology, Inc. announced its quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology with broad market availability of the 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD, a QLC SSD, which began shipping to select customers and partners in May of this year.

Available through global distributors, the 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD accelerates the company’s lead in the QLC market, enabling replacement of HDD drives (with SSDs and building on the firm’s recent launch of the Crucial P1 NVMe QLC SSD for consumer markets.

Enterprise storage needs are increasing as data center applications deliver real-time user insights and intelligent and enhanced user experiences, leveraging AI, machine learning, big data and real-time analytics. At the same time, there is a growing consumer need for higher storage capacity to support digital experiences. QLC SSDs are designed to address these requirements.

“Since launching the world’s first QLC SSD and now making it available broadly to the market, Micron is enabling the rapid shift from slow, power-hungry HDDs to solid state drives,” said Derek Dicker, corporate VP and GM, storage business unit, Micron. “QLC technology will become ubiquitous as today’s enterprise and consumer segments start reaping the inherent advantages of SSDs over HDDs, now delivered at similar price points offered by HDDs.“

High-density company’s QLC 3D NAND flash media achieves densities of one terabit on a single chip, enabled by next-generation cell architecture, and offers an option to AI and machine learning professionals. Providing the ease of SATA with the economics and speed of QLC NAND, the 5210 ION SSD has already hastened the speed at which AI learns.

“By switching to QLC SSDs from HDD drives, our machine learning workloads complete eight times faster for TensorFlow processing, TFRecord creation, ingest and image classification,” said Gautam Shah, CEO, Colfax International, machine learning solution provider. “We found that a 2.3TB, 100,000 image dataset took 15.17 hours on our HDD platform while the Micron 5210 ION completed the same task in just 1.87 hours, resulting in 13 hours of savings on an everyday task. The more machine learning you do and the bigger your dataset, the more your time savings will compound.“

“With AI and deep learning transforming every industry, we see exponential demand for deep-learning-specific, GPU-accelerated compute and high-performance storage solutions,” said Dr. Rene Meyer, VP, technology, Amax Information Technologies, Inc. , deep learning solutions provider. “Fast training data access is crucial to efficient model training. Replacing a traditional 64TB HDD centralized shared storage array with an all-flash Micron 5210 array, we found a 10x bandwidth increase and a notable reduction of model training times. The drive’s combination of fast read performance coupled with cost-reducing QLC NAND and the SATA interface make the 5210 an easy choice for shared centralized storage solutions.“

Key features and target workloads of 5210 ION SSD
The 5210 ION arrives in capacities up to 7.68TB in the affordable and HDD-compatible 2.5-inch (7mm) SATA form factor. Accessing data at the speed of flash, it delivers sequential read speeds of 540MB/s and up to 90,000 random read IO/s. Compared to the largest 10,000rpm HDDs available, it delivers 175 times faster random reads, 30 times faster random writes and two times faster sequential throughput. ⁽¹⁾ It’s also three times more energy efficient, fueling a lower terabyte-to-terabyte TCO. The slim 2.5-inch form factor also allows to pack twice as many 5210 ION SSDs into the typical 2U rack and save on power, cooling, licenses and floor space. ⁽²⁾

For read-intensive workloads such as the data lakes that feed AI, machine learning, deep learning and other read-intensive environments – real-time analytics, big data, object stores, business intelligence, NoSQL databases, media streaming and more – the 5210 ION is architected to meet the needs of the fast-growing enterprise workloads.

The 5210 ION SSD is in mass production and available through global distributors, resellers and system builders – at prices comparable to 10,000rpm HDDs.

Prices from Starline Computer GmbH:
1,92TB: €410
3,84TB: €790
7,68TB: €1,425

Click to enlarge

⁽¹⁾ Based on a typical 2U storage server with the ability to hold twelve 3.5-inch drives or 24 2.5-inch drives.
⁽²⁾ Based on public data sheet values for the 1.92TB Micron 5210 SSD (70,000 IO/s) and SNIA PTSe IO/s industry-standard test results or 2.4TB 10,000rpm hybrid HDDs (rounded up to 400 IO/s). Actual performance may vary. Energy efficiency comparison based on data sheet values for active average reads.

Ressources:
5210 ION DS   
Machine learning white paper and case study by Colfax International
Deep learning white paper and case study by AMAX
QLC thought leadership center for workload-specific research   
Company’s blog