In what appears to be an unintended leak, a product web page for the highly-awaited Samsung 980 PRO SSD was posted and later taken down from Samsung’s web site for Singapore. The 980 PRO was first previewed in January at CES as their first shopper SSD to assist PCIe 4.0, however with little or no technical data. No launch date was introduced however Samsung’s PR stated to anticipate extra data in Q2.
The timing of this leak is unsurprising: if Samsung was planning for a Q2 or early Q3 launch earlier than COVID-19 hit, it is smart for them to be making ready for a launch within the close to future. However, this leak brings just a few shock about what sort of product the 980 PRO can be. Since this wasn’t an official, coordinated announcement, the specs revealed is probably not remaining and we nonetheless haven’t any indication of pricing or launch date. But the large shock is that the 980 PRO will apparently be utilizing TLC NAND, a primary for Samsung’s PRO fashions. Samsung has been the final holdout providing high-end MLC-based SSDs whereas the remainder of the SSD business has moved on to TLC (and QLC), for each shopper and enterprise markets. Samsung supplied an early indication that they could lastly be abandoning MLC NAND in early 2019 when the TLC-based 970 EVO was changed with the 970 EVO Plus, a refresh that switched from 64L to 92L TLC. There was by no means any signal of a corresponding 970 PRO Plus mannequin within the works.
The change from MLC to TLC means the rated write endurance of the 980 PRO can be half that of the 970 PRO and equal to the TLC-based 970 EVO and EVO Plus. The upside is that the 980 PRO could also be extra competitively priced in opposition to different high-end shopper NVMe SSDs. It’s additionally fairly potential that Samsung wanted to introduce SLC caching to be able to hit the 5GB/s write speeds they’re promising for the 980 PRO.
| Samsung High-End NVMe SSD Comparison | |||||
| Model | 980 PRO | 970 PRO | 970 EVO Plus | ||
| Capacities | 250 GB 500 GB 1000 GB |
512 GB 1024 GB |
250 GB 500 GB 1000 GB 2000 GB |
||
| Interface | PCIe Four x4 NVMe 1.3 |
PCIe Three x4 NVMe 1.3 |
PCIe Three x4 NVMe 1.3 |
||
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 Single-sided | ||||
| Controller | Samsung Elpis | Samsung Phoenix | Samsung Phoenix | ||
| NAND | 3D TLC | 64L MLC | 92L TLC | ||
| SLC Write Caching | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| Specifications under are for 1TB fashions particularly | |||||
| Sequential Read | 7000 MB/s | 3500 MB/s | 3500 MB/s | ||
| Sequential Write | 5000 MB/s (SLC) 2000 MB/s (TLC) |
2700 MB/s | 3300 MB/s (SLC) 1700 MB/s (TLC) |
||
| Random Read (4kB) |
QD1 | 22okay IOPS | 15okay IOPS | 19okay IOPS | |
| Max | 1M IOPS | 500okay IOPS | 600okay IOPS | ||
| Random Write (4kB) |
QD1 | 60okay IOPS | 55okay IOPS | 60okay IOPS | |
| Max | 1M IOPS | 500okay IOPS | 550okay IOPS (SLC) 400okay IOPS (TLC) |
||
| Active Power | 6.2 W (Average) 8.9 W (Burst) |
5.2 W (Read) 5.7 W (Write) |
5.5 W (Read) 6.Zero W (Write) |
||
| Write Endurance | 600 TB 0.Three DWPD |
1200 TB 0.66 DWPD |
600 TB 0.Three DWPD |
||
| Warranty | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years | ||
| Launch Date | 2020? | May 2018 | January 2019 | ||
| Launch MSRP | TBD | $629.99 (62¢/GB) |
$249.99 (25¢/GB) |
||
The product web page for the 980 PRO indicated that sequential learn pace is now deliberate to be 7 GB/s, an enchancment over the 6.5 GB/s listed earlier this 12 months at CES. We additionally get our first have a look at random IO specs, with the 1TB mannequin hitting a most of 1M IOPS for both reads or writes. Performance at a queue depth of 1 is barely improved over the 970 PRO and 970 EVO Plus, and post-cache sequential write speeds are additionally up from the 970 EVO Plus. This factors to the 980 PRO as doubtless utilizing Samsung’s 1xx-layer 3D TLC reasonably than the 92L used within the 970…
