Samsung 980 Pro PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 SSD has been launched, rated at 7000 MB/sec reads

It's a bit weird when you browse the Samsung website and see the Samsung 980 Pro NVMe listed, as Samsung has not briefed media or has even announced it officially, but yeah it's there alright and thus official. Meet the new Samsung 980 Pro PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD rated at 7000 MB/sec for reads.

Samsung has uncovered the Samsung 980 Pro on a product page on its website. There will be 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB versions. Listed are some blazing performances, sequential read and write speeds are listed at 7000 MB/s and 5000 MB/s, respectively. Samsung is pitching 4KB random read speeds of up to one million IOPS in the best circumstances with the 1TB model, up to 60,000 IOPS in the most adverse cases with 4K random writes. The product uses a new controller called Elpis (no I did not write that wrong). In Greek mythology, Elpis is the personification and spirit of hope (usually seen as an extension to suffering by the Greeks, not as a god). 

The NAND storage store methodology for the 980 Pro is TLC based (so three bits per cell written), and not MLC opposed to the older versions. That also means that the endurance of this drive has become less or more limited compared to the last generation 970 Pro series. It's now 600 terabytes written for the 1 TB model (TBW), that was 1200 TBW for the 970 Pro, and even less than the 960 Pro which was listed at 800 TBW. With a warranty of 5 years or the respective TBW value depleted you should see this puppy last a while though.

Availability and pricing have not been shared just yet.

	250 GB	500 GB	1 TB
Sequential read	6400 MB/s	6900 MB/s	7000 MB/s
Sequential write	2700 MB/s	5,000 MB/s	5000 MB/s
4KB random read (QD1 / QD32)	22000 IOPS / 500000 IOPS	22000 IOPS / 800000 IOPS	22000 IOPS / 1 Million IOPS
4KB random write (QD1 / QD32)	60000 IOPS / 600000 IOPS	60000 IOPS / 1 Million IOPS	60000 IOPS / 1 Million IOPS
Controller		Elpis
NAND type		3 bit per cell MLC (aka TLC)
DRAM cache	512 MB		1 GB
Power consumption (maximum / average)	7W / 5W	7.4W / 5.9W	8.9W / 6.2W / 35mW
Power consumption idle	35 mW
Lifespan	150 TBW	300 TBW	600 TBW
Warranty	5 years