Samsung has recently unveiled their new high end NVMe SSD, the 980 Pro, which boasts speeds of up to 7GBps. This is double the performance of their current high end NVMe, the 970 Pro.
Most new motherboards being released are coming with PCIE gen 4, which offers higher speeds and bandwidth. The 980 Pro is Samsung’s first PCIE 4.0 SSD, offering up to 2 TB capacities. These new SSD’s feature Samsung’s new controller design and now have 3-bit cells instead of 2-bit cells, which allows for higher storage capacity. Here are the specs that we have so far:
| Samsung 980 PRO SSD Specifications | ||||||
| Capacity | 250 GB | 500 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB | ||
| Interface | PCIe 4 x4, NVMe 1.3c | |||||
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 Single-sided | |||||
| Controller | Samsung Elpis | |||||
| NAND | Samsung 128L 3D TLC | |||||
| LPDDR4 DRAM | 512MB | 1GB | 2GB | |||
| SLC Write Cache Size |
Min | 4 GB | 4 GB | 6 GB | TBD | |
| Max | 49 GB | 94 GB | 114 GB | |||
| Sequential Read | 6400 MB/s | 6900 MB/s | 7000 MB/s | |||
| Sequential Write | SLC | 2700 MB/s | 5000 MB/s | 5000 MB/s | ||
| TLC | 500 MB/s | 1000 MB/s | 2000 MB/s | |||
| Random Read IOPS (4kB) |
QD1 | 22k | 22k | 22k | ||
| Max | 500k | 800k | 1000k | |||
| Random Write IOPS (4kB) |
QD1 | 60k | 60k | 60k | ||
| Max | 600k | 1000k | 1000k | |||
| Active Power | Read | 5.0 W | 5.9 W | 6.2 W | ||
| Write | 3.9 W | 5.4 W | 5.7 W | |||
| Idle Power | APST | 35 mW | ||||
| L1.2 | 5 mW | |||||
| Write Endurance | 150 TB 0.3 DWPD |
300 TB 0.3 DWPD |
600 TB 0.3 DWPD |
1200 TB 0.3 DWPD |
||
| Warranty | 5 years | |||||
| Launch MSRP | $89.99 (36¢/GB) |
$149.99 (30¢/GB) |
$229.99 (23¢/GB) |
TBD | ||
These new SSDs can be used by gamers and content creators alike, offering lightning fast speeds for software and operating systems. Samsung NVMe SSDs always deliver exactly as promised and are known to be top of the market. Each new breakthrough offers noticeable improvements over the last, as can be seen below:
| Samsung Client/Consumer PCIe SSD Controller History | |||||||
| Codename | Elpis | Phoenix | Polaris | UBX | UAX | ||
| Part Number | S4LV003 | S4LR020 | S4LP077 | S4LN058 | S4LN053 | ||
| Host Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 2.0 x4 | ||
| Protocol Support | NVMe 1.3c | NVMe 1.3 | NVMe 1.2 | NVMe 1.1 (or AHCI) |
AHCI | ||
| Number of IO Queues | 128 | 32 | 7 | 8 | 1 | ||
| Max Queue Size | 16384 (per queue) | 32 | |||||
| Fabrication Process | 8nm | 14nm | ? | ? | ? | ||
| DRAM Support | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4 | LPDDR3 | LPDDR3 | LPDDR2 | ||
| Retail Consumer Products |
980 PRO | 970 PRO 970 EVO 970 EVO Plus |
960 PRO 960 EVO |
950 PRO | (None) | ||
| Client OEM Products |
PM9A1 | SM981 PM981 |
SM961 PM961 |
SM951 PM951 |
XP941 | ||
As of yet, there is no release date from Samsung, but many are hopeful that they will release before the end of the year. For more information, go to Samsung’s website.
