As reported by Anandtech, Samsung has showcased its next-gen 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD at CES. This M.2 NVMe SSD drive would be Samsung's first consumer SSD to support PCIe 4.0 SSD. Information regarding this SSD is limited, as it was just recently shown off at CES 2020 but shows that Samsung is now ready to start shifting its manufacturing attention to the consumer PCIe 4.0 market.

Samsung Shows off the Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

Since this is just a preview of this upcoming SSD instead of a formal announcement, the info released about this SSD is minimal. What has been shown by Samsung is that this drive utilizes PCIe Gen4 NVMe technology, offers read speeds up to 6500 MB/s, and this drives offers write speeds of up to 5000 MB/s. Those speeds are a bit faster than the current PCIe 4.0 drives using the Phison E16 controller, but at the end of 2020, the Phsion E18 and other controllers could be offering speeds of up to 7 GB/s.

The available capacities will range from 250 GB to 1 TB, and these capacities strongly indicate that Samsung is most likely still using 2-bit MLC for the PRO line rather than switching to the 3-bit TLC NAND flash. The fate of Samsung's flagship SSD product line was unclear when Samsung had updated the 970 EVO with new NAND as the 970 EVO Plus didn't introduce a 970 PRO Plus model alongside it. Unfortunately, Samsung has not stated which generation of V-NAND and no details on the controller this SSD uses.

Competition

The Samsung 980 PRO will be facing some stiff competition in 2020, as Lexar has already shown off a prototype PCIe 4.0 SSD, which will likely have speeds of up to 7 GB/s in production. The Lexar prototype PCIe 4.0 SSD currently is only able to have a sequential read speed of 6.2 GB/s and offers a sequential write speed of 4.2 GB/s. The Lexar prototype will be using 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash technology when this prototype goes into production, and the Lexar drive is planning to offer a 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities, which is more spacious than the 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities provided by the Samsung 980 PRO

Pricing and Availability

While pricing, availability, and more detailed specifications remain elusive, Samsung has stated that it expects to have more information in Q2 of this year.