Micron has unveiled what it claims to be the world’s fastest PCIe 6.0 SSD, achieving impressive speeds of up to 27 GB/s, thanks to a collaboration with Astera Labs and their advanced PCIe 6.0 switch. This groundbreaking technology was showcased at DesignCon 2025, where it was demonstrated in conjunction with two Micron PCIe 6.0 SSDs and an Nvidia H100 GPU, resulting in sequential read speeds that exceed those of current top-tier PCIe 5.0 drives by a significant margin.
The new Micron SSD, which had previously been hinted at in August of last year as the first PCIe 6.0 storage solution, was initially reported to reach 26 GB/s in read speeds. However, during the demonstrations at DesignCon 2025, the SSD achieved an impressive 27.14 GB/s, showcasing the capabilities of the technology. For comparison, the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSD tested to date, the Crucial T705, reaches a maximum read speed of 14.5 GB/s, highlighting the substantial performance leap offered by the new PCIe 6.0 standard. The exceptional performance of the Micron SSD can be attributed to Astera’s Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch, an innovative network switch that facilitates connections across up to 64 PCIe 6.0 lanes. Designed for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI applications, the switch enhances communication between CPUs, GPUs, and storage nodes. It also benefits from Nvidia’s Magnum IO GPUDirect (GDS) software, which allows storage devices to access GPU memory directly, bypassing the CPU buffer and minimizing latency.
Astera Labs has been working on PCIe 6.0 technologies for some time, previously showcasing its PCIe 6.0 Aries retimers at GTC 2024. These devices serve to boost signal integrity for PCIe connections, particularly when using bridges and extenders. The recent demonstration with Micron solidifies the readiness of PCIe 6.0 technology for practical applications. The PCIe 6.x standard, which is currently undergoing revisions (with the latest version being PCIe 6.3), is set to revolutionize data transfer speeds for both enterprise and consumer products. While PCIe 5.0 allows for a maximum of 128 GB/s bidirectional speeds on an x16 bus, PCIe 6.x doubles that capacity to 256 GB/s. This enhancement is particularly crucial for the HPC and AI sectors, which demand faster data transfer rates to keep pace with evolving technology needs.
