Samsung’s 980 PRO SSD passes through Korea’s regulators

It has been confirmed that Samsung’s 980 PRO SSD has passed through Sout Korea’s NRRA, a body of regulators which certifies electronics. The Reddit user wickedplayer494 first spotted this listing, and the Korean listing confirms that 250GB, 500GB and 1TB models of Samsung’s 980 PRO are planned. 

Samsung’s 980 PRO destroys all current consumer PCIe 4.0-based M.2 SSDs, all of which deliver sequential read speeds of 5GB/s using a Phison controller. Back at CES 2020, Samsung confirmed that its new 980 PRO would deliver sequential read speeds of 6.5GB/s and sequential write speeds of 5GB/s. That said, the performance of sub-1TB models could be lower.     

These SSD speeds will require a PCIe 4.0 compatible systems, making the 980 PRO’s full performance only available on AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation systems at launch. Intel users will have to wait for PCIe 4.0 complaint processors. 

To achieve these speeds, Samsung created a new PCIe 4.0 compatible SSD controller, updated its 3D V-NAND to deliver improved power efficiency and access speeds and increased its V-NAND stack size to 128-layers. 

Like Samsung’s older 9X0 PRO series SSDs, Samsung’s 980 PRO SSD is expected to use MLC NAND, a premium NAND type which promises increased longevity over TLC NAND and improved latency characteristics.