During its SSD Summit in Seoul, Samsung will announce two new SSD drives named 960 Pro and 960 EVO. Both are built on the M.2 form-factor, and NVM Express (NVMe) PCIe Gen.3 x4 interface for flash memory.
The new 960 SSD line of products show impressive specifications. According to Samsung, the sequential transfer read speeds top 3500 MB/s (960 Pro) and 2100 MB/s (960 EVO). I found the random read and writes operation numbers even more interesting, with 440,000 (Pro) and 360,000 (EVO) respectively.
The number of Read/Writes operations per second is critical because a large number of relatively small files won’t cause any major throughput blockage. It is the capacity of treating data requests as fast as possible that become a major performance factor. This is why R/W operations is a key metric.
To most consumers, the random access is the SSD performance differentiation which is the easiest to perceive. In the real world, most data are accessed randomly, and things like app launches, or boot sequences are directly impacted by the random access throughput.
In the enterprise space, some applications can be optimized for sequential data. Some of those optimizations date back from when mechanical drives ruled, or maybe the very nature of the workload lands itself to this kind of read/write sequential pattern. It’s just that it is not all that common for regular users.
The Samsung 960 Pro SSD drive capacity can reach 2 TB (along with 512GB and 1 TB models)and will cost $329 for the most affordable model. The Samsung 960 EVO will come in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities with pricing starting at $129.99.
More details will be revealed during the SSD Summit keynote that starts at 2pm, Korea time (in ~1hr after the time of publication), so we will update this article as we gather more information. In the meantime, here are the official specifications:
960 EVO
250GB, 500GB and 1TB
New: Samsung “Intelligent TurboWrite technology” sequential R/W accelerator
3,200 MB/s (Read) / 1,900 MB/s (Write)
Three-year limited warranty up to 400 TBW for 1TB capacity, whichever occurs first.
Dynamic Thermal Guard technology to manage performance levels and prevent overheating
M.2 form factor
NVMe PCIe Gen.3 x4 lane interface
960 Pro
512GB and 1TB and 2TB
Sequential speed: 3,500 MB/s (Read) / 2,100 MB/s (Write)
Five-year limited warranty up to 1.2 Petabytes for 2TB capacity, whichever occurs first.
Dynamic Thermal Guard technology to manage performance levels and prevent overheating
2 form factor
NVMe PCIe Gen.3 x4 lane interface
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