Samsung reveals first NVMe 950 PRO SSD

Although it had only just finished announcing the 950 PRO SSD at the 2015 Samsung SSD Global Summit, it then went on to confirm that it too will receive a capacity upgrade thanks to the third generation V-NAND. The 950 PRO range is Samsung’s first Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) based SSD which supports PCIe 3.0 interface, in addition to the V-NAND technology that has been part of the previous EVO SSD devices from Samsung. Random read performance up to 300,000 IOPS, and write speeds are up to 110,000 IOPS. Basically, more V-NAND layers means denser storage capacity, which is why Samsung will be able to pack more storage into such a small package. This puts it in the same league as some of its existing products, but this is the first one to be on sale to the public, as opposed to being provided to manufacturers (OEMs).

The 950 Pro is available in either 512GB or 256GB capacities. But for those with machines that are capable, this seems like a bit of a no-brainer.

Samsung Australia’s Director of Enterprise and Small Business, Todd Lynton said: “Samsung is globally recognised as a leader in the innovation of solid state drive (SSD) technology”. The company’s latest SSD ditches legacy the SATA connector and AHCI protocol, and will be available only in M.2 form factor units.

In the case of the 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, the combination of NVMe, speedy V-NAND chips, and a triple core, eight-channel UBX controller has resulted in some eye-popping performance. Users of applications that benefit from high input/output operations per second (IOPS) will experience up to four times faster performance than with traditional SATA SSDs. The Samsung 850 PRO SSD series had a 10-year warranty, so the 10-year to 5-year warranty reduction might be disappointing to some.

Speaking of M.2, the newly announced 950 Pro will also get a capacity bump in 2016. Early next year, the company will release its revolutionary 3D V-NAND 1TB storage sized 950 PRO for an undisclosed price. “The new Intel SkyLake processors and the Windows 10 OS driver support for NVMe makes this shift possible”, said Kim.

The new 950 PRO SSD also comes with AES 256-bit full disk encryption to protect data and a dynamic thermal guard to protect the drive from inclement weather conditions (0 to 70 degrees Celsius).