Astera Labs has teamed up with Micron to deliver another industry-first technology development and accelerate the PCIe® 6.x ecosystem! At DesignCon 2025 in Astera Labs Booth #755, the two companies are showcasing the first public demonstration of end-to-end interoperability between a PCIe 6.x Switch and a PCIe 6.x SSD, currently available for ecosystem development.
The demo features Astera Labs’ Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch and Micron’s PCIe 6.x Data Center SSD delivering an unparalleled sequential read speed of 27GB/s. By being able to support PCIe 6.x end to end, this demo highlights the potential of PCIe 6.x for AI workloads.
The Need for PCIe 6.x in AI and Cloud Infrastructure
Hyperscale datacenters are under immense pressure to keep up with the processing demands of today’s AI workloads. These AI workloads have an insatiable appetite for computational power, storage, and memory bandwidth. Therefore, they demand:
- High-speed interconnects to efficiently transfer massive datasets between application specific computing elements to optimize power and compute cycles.
- Low-latency communication to synchronize computations in scale-up fabrics.
- Scalable architectures to accommodate the ever-increasing model sizes and data throughput.
- Tremendously fast storage to empower AI applications with rapid data access across the network and between storage and GPUs
Doubling the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0, PCIe 6.x delivers up to 256 GB/s of bidirectional throughput per x16 lane, meeting the data transfer demands of compute, storage, and memory resources. Its low latency architecture is critical for AI training and inferencing workloads that rely on real-time data processing.
Meeting the Challenge: Astera Labs and Micron Deliver End-to-End PCIe 6.x Connectivity
This demonstration features a PCIe 6.x link-up between Astera Labs’ Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch, announced in October 2024, and Micron’s PCIe 6.x SSDs designed for ecosystem development.
Astera Labs’ Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch is the industry’s first PCIe 6.x switch, purpose-built for mixed traffic head-node AI connectivity with 64 PCIe 6.x lanes and 4-port architecture. It delivers predictable and high-performance GPU-to-CPU/NIC/SSD data flows.
Figure 1: Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch
Designed for high-performance AI and storage workloads, Micron developed its PCIe 6.x data center SSD technology to accelerate ecosystem development, an industry first. Micron first introduced its PCIe 6.x data center SSD for ecosystem enablement at the Future of Memory and Storage Summit 2024, showcasing remarkable sequential read speeds exceeding 26GB/s. In this joint demo with Astera Labs, the Micron SSD is now demonstrating even faster sequential read speeds.
The demonstration set-up for DesignCon features one Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch connected to a CPU host, an NVIDIA H100 GPU, and two PCIe 6.x E3.S Micron SSDs. Using NVIDIA® Magnum IO™ GPUDirect® Storage (GDS), a direct data path was established between the GPU and SSD.
Figure 2: Demo Set-up
Looking at the COSMOS utility, we can see that the demo delivers sequential read speeds of 27.14 GB/s (25.2 GiB/s) per drive.
Figure 3: COSMOS Utility Output
This demonstration highlights the impact of PCIe 6.x for AI workloads and data center optimization.
Scorpio Smart Fabric Switch: Purpose-Built for AI
Astera Labs’ Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switches are specifically designed for AI head-node connectivity and scale-out architectures. They offer energy efficient fabric solutions with predictable, secure, and high-performance data flows and extensive fleet management capabilities for accelerated AI infrastructure deployments at cloud-scale.
Integrating Astera Labs’ COSMOS software suite, Scorpio delivers a smart, customizable connectivity backbone with unprecedented data center observability, enhanced security, and extensive fleet management capabilities. It enables unmatched insights into the state and health of accelerated computing platforms to ensure maximum uptime and availability.
Accelerating AI Innovation with PCIe 6.x Technology
By demonstrating end-to-end PCIe 6.x connectivity, Astera Labs’ and Micron’s collaboration is a giant step forward to ensure the PCIe 6.x ecosystem keeps pace with evolving AI and cloud infrastructure needs. With double the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0, PCIe 6.x enables faster data transfers and improved system efficiency for AI workloads.
See the Joint Demo at DesignCon 2025
Visit Astera Labs in Booth #755 at DesignCon 2025 Expo Hall, taking place January 29-30 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, to see end-to-end PCIe 6.x connectivity with real-time telemetry and meet with our PCIe experts. Contact to schedule a time to meet.
Additional Resources:
- Webpage: Scorpio Smart Fabric Switch
- Video: Intro to Scorpio Smart Fabric Switches
- Video: Scorpio First-Look Demo
- Blog: AI Demands Purpose-Built Solutions
- Micron press release (August 2024): Micron Develops Industry’s First PCIe Gen6 Data Center SSD for Ecosystem Enablement | Micron Technology
- Micron blog: Micron leads ecosystem: first to develop PCIe® Gen6 data center SSD | Micron Technology Inc.
- Micron webpage: Data center SSD storage | Micron Technology Inc.