PC Speeds to Increase & Intel Dominance Challenged by Samsung’s SSD 950 Pro Solid State Drive


09/22/2015



To achieve an absolutely blistering top end speed of 2,500MB/sec for sequential reads and up to 1,500MB/sec for sequential writes, Samsung’s new generation of PCI Express-based solid state storage technology that was announced on September 22, would be the key.

The new technology of Samsung, being dubbed as the SSD 950 Pro is a follow-up to the company’s very successful SSD 850 Pro series of drives, the new SSD 950 Pro also features Samsung’s 3D V-NAND (Vertical NAND) stacked Flash memory. This is an advancement of the earlier version and this new technology now employs the latest NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) and PCIe (PCI Express Gen 3) interface technology to allow bandwidth to scale much higher.
 
While the new technology based Samsung drives would reach speeds of 2,500MB/sec for sequential reads and up to 1,500MB/sec for sequential writes, the average standard SATA SSD reaches about 500MB/sec for both read and write throughput which often results in SATA interface bottleneck.
The bottlenecks are opened up b the NVMe over a PCI Express Gen 3 interface.  

Compatible with many next generation desktop and mobile platforms that currently support the M2 standard, the new SSD 950 Pro will be packaged  in the tiny M.2 2280 “gumstick” standard of the PCIe slot machanical type.

Notebook powerhouses as the ASUS ZenBook UX501 and even high performance small form factor desktops like  Alienware’s X51R3 have been exclusively using Samsung’s their first NVMe-based PM951 series of M.2 Solid State Drives that had allowed Samsung excellent uptake.

Targeted for higher endurance applications, the SSD 950 Pro, as its moniker suggests, is a follow-on to the 850 Pro. A 200 – 400 TBW (Terabytes Written) endurance rating (256GB and 512GB drives, respectively) and a 5 year warranty accompany these new drives by Samsung.

According to Samsung:
“The 950 PRO will be available in 512 gigabyte (GB) and 256GB storage capacities. The 512GB version delivers sequential read/write speeds of up to 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s. Random read performance is up to 300,000 IOPS, with write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS. It features Samsung’s second generation MLC V-NAND 32-layer 128Gb die with UBX controller and magician software”.
 
Coupled with Intel's SSD 750 Series NVMe SSD that was launched back in April of this year, the Samsung SSD 950 Pro is one of very few NVMe solutions on the market currently available.
 
However Samsung’s new SSD enjoys a slight edge over the Intel SSD 750 lines with a 2.5GB/sec reads against versus Intel’s 2.4GB/sec (2400MB/sec) spec and 1.5GB/sec writes compared to Intel’s 1.2GB/sec spec.
 
Samsung also has an edge in terms of price. The Intel drives are currently more expensive than Samsung’s quoted MSRP, which comes in at $.68 per GiB at the 512GB capacity ($349) and $.77 per GiB for the 256GB capacity ($199), compared to Intel’s current price of around $400 on the 400GB variant of the SSD 750.
 
These drives are slated to be launched next month.
 
(Source:www.forbes.com)