Last week, Samsung officially announced the Samsung 990 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD, which officially states that the 990 PRO fully balances the requirements of high speed, high power efficiency and high reliability with 3D TLC (3bit) particles and new self-developed master control, with sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s and 6,900MB/s respectively, and random read and write speeds of up to 1,400K and 1,550K IOPS respectively. With the new 3D TLC (3bit) particles and a new proprietary controller, sequential read and write speeds are up to 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s respectively, while random read and write speeds are up to 1,400K and 1,550K IOPS respectively, a 55% increase in random read and write performance compared to the 980 PRO.
Samsung 990 PRO series products use PCIe 4.0 interface, and the industry’s general perception is that this product will be able to improve the transfer speed of the new PCIe standard PCI Express 5.0, but in fact, Samsung Electronics still maintain the 990 Pro PCI Express 4.0 standard.
In this regard, Samsung Electronics explained, “This is not a product development or technical issues, but simply a judgment based on market conditions.”
Samsung says the newly designed SSD controller is significantly more energy efficient, with a 50 percent improvement compared to the 980 PRO. In addition, the 990 PRO adds a nickel coating to the controller and uses a tabbed heatsink on the drive to ensure stable heat dissipation, while the 990 PRO (cooling version) will also offer an additional layer of heatsink and support for RGB lighting textures.
PCI Express 5.0 is a new standard being released by PCI-SIG in May 2019. It doubles the transfer rate again compared to 4.0, which can now transfer up to approximately 2 GB/s per lane, and Micron’s previous demonstration of 5.0 solid state sequential read and write up to 10 GB/s.
The Samsung 990 PRO will go on sale globally in November this year, with the 1TB model for $179 (about RMB 1224.36) and the 2TB version for $309 (about RMB 2113.56), with the heatsink model being $20 more expensive, and the 4TB model to be launched next year.
