Samsung has just unveiled the SSD 950 Pro which it calls the fastest mainstream SSD yet.
This newest generation of consumer-ready solid-state drive from Samsung was introduced at the annual SSD summit in Seoul, South Korea.
The SSD 950 Pro touts to offer read speeds of up to 2,500 Mbps as well as write speeds as fast as 1,500 Mbps. In comparison with its predecessor, the well-received SSD 850 Pro, the new SSD is more than four times the read speed and almost three times the write speed.
The new SSD will likely be available from retailers in October. The 256 GB version will have a price tag of $199.99 and the 512GB version will be priced at $349.99.
"If you're a heavy workload professional searching for an SSD with uncompromising power and performance, look no further. The next-generation Samsung 950 PRO delivers exceptional performance for professionals," reads the product description of the new SSD on Samsung's website.
This SSD 950 Pro comes with a 3D V-NAND (Vertical NAND) stacked Flash memory, employing the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) as well as the PCIe (PCI Express Gen 3) interface technology. This gives a higher bandwidth along with a lower latency.
To date, a number of SSDs still use the older AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) technology. Intel developed the AHCI back in 2004 for traditional, spinning hard drives. While AHCI performs fine for classic hard drives, it was not meant for low latency NAND chips.
Samsung claims the SSD can endure 20G vibrations as well as 1500G (over .5 milliseconds) of physical impact, making it ideal for rugged devices.
Moreover, with the new SSD 950 Pro, users will expect the laptop's battery lifespan to not quickly run out. This makes the new SSD suitable for carrying out engineering simulation or complicated data analysis on a laptop, while keeping maximum performance levels. In particular, the 950 Pro only uses 5.7 W at maximum workloads. Furthermore, it only consumes 2.0 milliwatts (mW) of power once the laptop is in standby mode. This is less than 50 percent the consumption of a SATA-interface 850 Pro in Device Sleep Mode.
To prevent overheating, the 950 Pro incorporates a Dynamic Thermal Throttling (DTT) technology, responsible in managing the device's temperature.
