Micron ships industry-first 176-layer QLC SSDs: up to 4.5GB/sec reads

Micron has just announced it's now shipping the industry's first 176-layer QLD NAND flash (quad-level cell) for SSDs, with the new Micron 2400 SSD PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD now shipping to customers.

The new Micron 2400 SSDs ship in various form factors: M.2 22x30mm, M.2 22x42mm, and M.2 22x80mm with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities available in each form factor -- even the tiny 22x30mm form factor. The new 176-layer QLC NAND flash inside of the Micron 2400 SSDs has up to 33% faster I/O throughput, and up to 24% less read latency.

Micron's new flagship 2400 SSD in 2TB offers up to 4.5GB/sec (4500MB/sec) reads, and up to 4GB/sec (4000MB/sec) writes while random reads are at 650K IOPS, while random writes hit 700K IOPs.

Jeremy Werner, corporate VP and GM for Micron's Storage division explains: "Micron's 2400 SSD builds upon our 176-layer NAND industry leadership to drive the transition to QLC-based storage for the client market. Furthering our market leadership, we expect the new 2400 PCIe Gen4 SSD will significantly accelerate the adoption of QLC in client devices as it enables broader design options and more affordable capacity".

Now you might be thinking... all this flashy 176-layer QLD NAND flash and they can't even breach 5GB/sec with a world filled with 7GB/sec+ SSDs from the likes of Sabrent with its Rocket 4 Plus Gen 4 SSDs. But, most people would never touch 5GB/sec+ sustained, so 4.5GB/sec is way more than enough to have an insta-loading gaming PC.