Micron SSD 2400: The first 2 TB SSD as a 30 mm short card

Micron has introduced the SSD 2400 series, which is unique in its smallest M.2230 form with a length of just 30 mm. Such mini-SSDs have so far been available with a maximum capacity of 1 TB and a PCI Express 3.0 connection – and even there the range is extremely limited. Micron is launching the PCIe 4.0 SSD 2400 with a capacity of up to 2 TB and also wants to explicitly offer the models in retail for upgraders.

The downside: interested parties have to live with QLC NAND flash, which stores four bits per cell (quadruple level cells) and, from experience, writes quite slowly outside of a pseudo SLC cache (1 bit per cell). In the 2400 SSDs This is where the latest NAND flash generation with 176 memory layers sits – Micron previously only offered these as TLC components with three bits per cell (triple level cells).

High performance from 1 TB

Only the 2 TB model can achieve the full write speed of 4 GB/s via four PCIe 4.0 lanes. Reading is 4.5 GB / s in it. The 1 TB model reads just as quickly, but only manages 3.6 GB/s when writing. The 2400 SSD with 512 GB breaks down to 1.8 GB/s when writing, since there are fewer dies in the memory chip, which means that parallelization suffers. Depending on the capacity, random access takes place with 400,000 to 700,000 IOPS.

Also typical for QLC SSDs are the warranty terms with a comparatively low endurance of 150 to 600 TB written depending on the capacity. The idle power consumption of 0.15 watts, i.e. when the SSDs are not actively being written to or large amounts of data are being read, should be positively emphasized.

For notebooks, tablets and Valve’s Steam Deck

So far, manufacturers have mainly sold M.2230 SSDs to PC manufacturers. Microsoft, for example, uses the format in some notebooks and tablets such as the Surface Pro 7+ and Surface Laptop 3. Valve is including such SSDs in the upcoming Steam Deck handheld console.

So far, only Kioxia’s BG4 series with capacities from 128 GB to 1 TB is widely available. However, with a maximum of 2.3 GB/s reading and 1.8 GB/s writing, the SSDs are significantly slower than Micron’s 2400 series.

Micron does not name prices and a specific delivery date in its communication. However, the manufacturer has already announced that it also wants to sell the new QLC components to other SSD manufacturers. The subsidiary brand Crucial will present its own products with it.

(mmma)