And no, that's not a joke. Samsung will announce and release the Samsung 960 EVO series SSDs soon. The budget EVO models will be based the SM961 but uses 48-layer 3-bit per cell (TLC) flash. It is based on a Samsung Polaris controller, not to be confused with anything AMD, of course.
The Samsung PM961 based products thus are the 960 EVO, featuring similar components, that "Polaris" controller and then are fitted with 48-layer TLC 3D-VNAND chips. Samsung is to release the new model in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB. Performance wise you'll get a smile on yuour face, it is tagged with sequential transfer rates of up to 3000 MB/s reads, with up to 1150 MB/s writes; 360,000 IOPS 4K random-read, and up to 280,000 IOPS 4K random-write.
The 960 EVO will become available likely next month in M.2 (NGFF-2280) and PCIe add-on card form-factors. These units obviously will require PCI-Express 3.0 with x4 lanes as the SSDs are using the the NVMe protocol.
| Product | Samsung PM961 |
|---|---|
| Pricing | TBA |
| Controller | Samsung Polaris |
| Protocol | NVMe |
| Form Factor | PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 Single-Sided 2280 |
| NAND | Samsung 48-Layer TLC V-NAND |
| DRAM | Samsung LPDDR3 |
| Available Capacity Sizes | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB |
| Sequential Read | Up To 3,000 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | Up To 1,150 MB/s |
| Random Read | Up To 360,000 IOPS |
| Random Write | Up To 280,000 IOPS |
| Endurance | TBA |
| Warranty | TBA |
Samsung Preps Samsung 960 EVO M2 with Polaris Architecture
