Today, Samsung is kicking off their 2016 Global SSD Summit in Seoul, Korea. As anticipated from yesterday’s banners spotted around the halls of the Shilla Hotel in South Korea, Samsung is introducing two new drives, the Samsung 960 PRO and 960 EVO.
Samsung 960 PRO
Based on NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4, the Samsung 960 PRO will be available in capacities of 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. The new 2TB capacity makes the Samsung 960 PRO the highest capacity M.2 NVMe SSD on the market. Samsung is able to achieve this through a “uniquely restructured package design” which we’ll likely be hearing about as the presentations kick off in just a few hours.
The new drive will feature Samsung’s 3D V-NAND, and sport sequential read performance up to 3,500MB/s and sequential write performance up to 2,100MB/s. 4K random read performance will be rated at up to 440,000 IOPS and 4K random write performance will be rated at up to 360,000 IOPS. As high temperatures have been an issue in previous PCIe drives, the Samsung 960 PRO will now feature Samsung’s new Dynamic Thermal Guard technology which will dynamically adjust performance to prevent overheating.
Warranty on the drive will be 5 years and endurance will be variable with the 2TB capacity sporting up to 1.2 petabytes. Yep you heard right, 1.2 petabytes on a consumer drive.
The Samsung 960 PRO will be available worldwide in October 2016 starting at a retail price of $329.99.
Samsung 960 EVO
Based on NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4, the Samsung 960 EVO will be available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. The new drive will feature Samsung’s 3D V-NAND and sport sequential read performance up to 3,200 MB/s and sequential write performance up to 1,900 MB/s. 4K random read performance will be rated at up to 380,000 IOPS and 4K random write performance will be rated at up to 360,000 IOPS. In order to achieve this level of performance, the Samsung 960 EVO will be the first drive to feature Samsung’s new Intelligent TurboWrite technology. Just like the Samsung 960 PRO, the Samsung 960 EVO will also feature Dynamic Thermal Guard technology which will dynamically adjust performance to prevent overheating.
Warranty on the Samsung 960 EVO will be 3 years with a variable endurance up to 400TBW on the 1TB capacity drive.
The Samsung 960 EVO will be available worldwide in October 2016 starting at a retail price of $129.99.
“We were proud to erect the NVMe era last year with the introduction of our 950 PRO SSD. Now, with the introuduction of the NVMe 960 PRO and 960 EVO SSDs, Samsung is once again taking the next step in the multi-terabyte SSD technology and the storage revolution, providing users higher capacities and speeds than ever before within an NVMe PCIe drive to create new possibilities for consumers and business professionals,”
– Unsoo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics
In addition to unveiling the new drives, Samsung will also be introducing a new version of Samsung Magician which is fully rebuilt with a new user interface. Samsung will be kicking off their SSD Global Summit presentation in just a few hours so we’ll be sure to cover all the new technologies that were introduced with the new drives.
** Updated 09/21/16 – Added pictures from the exhibit
*** In-depth article on the new launches and underlying technologies have been posted. Be sure to check it out here!
I cant wait for it to be available online in the USA.