Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the Micron 4600 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD, an innovative client storage drive for OEMs that is designed to deliver exceptional performance and user experience for gamers, creators and professionals. Leveraging Micron G9 TLC NAND, the 4600 SSD is Micron's first Gen 5 client SSD and doubles the performance of its predecessor.

The Micron 4600 SSD showcases sequential read speeds of 14.5 GB/s and write speeds of 12.0 GB/s. These capabilities allow users to load a large language model (LLM) from the SSD to DRAM in less than one second, enhancing the user experience with AI PCs. For AI model loading times, the 4600 SSD reduces load times by up to 62% compared to Gen 4 performance SSDs ensuring rapid deployment of LLMs and other AI workloads. Additionally, the 4600 SSD provides up to 107% improved energy efficiency (MB/s per watt) compared to Gen 4 performance SSDs, enhancing battery life and overall system efficiency.The 4600 SSD is the second Micron client SSD to incorporate the most advanced Micron G9 NAND technology, following the Micron 2650 NVMe SSD already in production.

Why it matters
Accomplishing more and cutting down wait time is more important than ever to gamers, creators and professionals alike. The 4600 leverages PCIe Gen 5 technology and the Micron G9 TLC NAND to provide remarkable speed and energy efficiency.

"With the 4600 NVMe SSD, users can load large language models in less than one second, enabling PC experiences in data-intensive applications, especially for AI," said Prasad Alluri, vice president and general manager for Client Storage at Micron. "As AI inference runs locally on the PC, the transition to Gen 5 SSDs addresses the increased need for higher performance and energy efficiency."

Gen 5 SSD technology will grow rapidly in 2025 and 2026. The 4600 NVMe SSD is compatible with the leading-edge platforms such as AMD's Ryzen 9000 Series processors, and the Intel Core Ultra Desktop and Mobile (Series 2) processors, ensuring seamless integration for PC OEMs.

"AMD is excited to collaborate on the validation of the Micron 4600 NVMe SSD with our latest Ryzen family of processors," said Joe Macri, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Compute and Graphics at AMD. "The Micron 4600 NVMe SSD is anticipated to deliver exceptional performance and a best-in-class user experience for the most demanding professional applications and high-speed gaming."

"The co-validation efforts with Micron in our Intel Folsom Open Labs have been instrumental to achieving today's compatibility milestone. The Micron 4600 SSD, which has been designed for PCIe Gen 5 platforms and offers fantastic performance and power efficiency, is now listed on the Intel PCL (Platform Component List)," said Todd Lewellen, vice president of Client Ecosystem Group at Intel. "The 4600 SSD is an ideal fit for AI PCs based on Intel Core Ultra processors, as well as future platforms."

"Lenovo will qualify the Micron 4600 SSD because of its industry-leading performance and its use of low temperature soldering (LTS) technology during SSD module assembly," said Takashi Sugawara, director and principal engineer at Lenovo. "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."

Level up to high-performing Gen 5 storage
The Micron 4600 NVMe SSD delivers up-to performance improvements over Gen 4 SSDs:4

• 14.5 GB/s sequential read speeds, 107%
• 12.0 GB/s sequential write speeds, 71%
• 2.1 million random read IOPS, 83%
• 2.1 million random write IOPS, 83%

Enhanced user experience
Designed to elevate AI, scientific, gaming and content creation experiences, the Micron 4600 NVMe SSD unlocks best-in-class PCMark 10 benchmark scores:

• Up to 38% better than Gen 4 performance SSDs
• Up to 11% better scores compared to Gen 5 competitors

The 4600 SSD provides exceptional user experiences over previous Gen 4 drives for scientific, media and entertainment, along with a variety of other use cases, as demonstrated with the SPECwpc benchmark results on speed improvements:

• Media and entertainment applications: up to 61% faster
• Energy industry applications: up to 59% faster
• Product development applications: up to 45% faster
• Life sciences applications: up to 38% faster

Building upon prior ultra-secure features like TCG Opal, signed firmware and secure boot, the 4600 SSD includes the latest in advanced security features such as Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM), Data Object Exchange (DOE) and Device Identifier Composition Engine (DICE), helping provide improved protection of user data.

The Micron 4600 NVMe SSD is now available for OEM sampling globally.