I think we mentioned this PM971 M.2 NVMe SSD last year in the summer already, it now has surfaced again and not to be confused with the PM981 series we talked about last week.

The PM971 series NVMe SSDs are OEM targeted and would sit slightly below the PM981 in price and performance, lets call it an entry level NVMe SSD. You can also look at the unit as Samsung 970 series SSD. Have a look at the photo first (and be amazed by the size of it).

The PM971 has a B&M Type M2 connector and thus is PCIe Gen2 x2

The PM971 has been spotted over at Toms and is based on a very small 22mm x 16mm x 1.5mm multi-chip package. The controller, you guessed it ... Samsung's Proton controller is used with the LPDDR4 DRAM cache and 64-layer V-NAND flash all crammed into a single chip. So basically you are looking at a PCB with connector and a single chip. The 971 series should still be able to deliver up to 1,500 MB/s sequential read and up to 900 MB/s sequential write speeds, which is relatively slow for say a NVMe M2 unit, but of course seriously fast compared to a regular SATA3 SSD.

IOPS wise Samsung seems to do really well, at 190,000 IOPS read and 170,000 IOPS write (4K Random). Once the product becomes available you may expect 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB models. 

A Very Tiny Samsung PM971 M.2 NVMe SSD Spotted