Samsung Electronics released the Samsung 950 PRO solid state drive (SSD), designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business laptops and PCs. The drive’s M.2 form factor means that users with ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations can benefit from industry-leading storage endurance, reliability and energy efficiency.
It’s the first consumer-ready Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) M.2 form factor SSD wth vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology; supporting the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) 3.0 interface. With the introduction of NVMe, the first protocol optimized for SSDs, users of the Samsung 950 PRO will benefit from improved performance and power saving which can help increase battery life and potentially reduce operating costs. The compact M.2 2280 form factor ensures compatibility with next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot interface.
Featuring the PCIe Gen.3 x4 interface and supporting the NVMe protocol, the Samsung 950 PRO offers improved random and sequential performance over Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface drives utilizing the legacy Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) protocol. 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 SDDs.
The 950 PRO will be available in 512GB and 256GB storage capacities. The 512GB version delivers sequential read/write speeds of up to 2500 MB/s and 2500 MB/s. Random read performance is up to 300,000 IOPS, with write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS. It features Samsung’s second generation MLC V-NAND 32-layer 128 Gb die with UBX controller and magician software.
Both capacities come with a 5-year limited warranty up to 200 terabytes written (TBW) for the 256GB and 400TBW for the 512GB. The 950 PRO will be available beginning in October 2015, with a suggested price of USD 199.99 (approx.) for the 256GB capacity and USD 349.99 (approx.) for the 512GB capacity.
