Samsung has unveiled its NVMe technology-infused 950 Pro SSD, its fastest such consumer drive to date. The device is capable of achieving blazing fast sequential read speeds of up to 2500MBps and sequential write speeds as high as 1500MBps. Set to be made available in October next month, the 512GB capacity commands a price of $349.99, while the 256GB variant asks for $199.99.
Compared to its older 850 PRO 512GB model, the Samsung 950 PRO SSD of the same memory capacity outperforms the SATA drive by more than 4.5 times in sequential read and 2.5 times in sequential write speeds. The amazing performance of the device mainly has to do with the NVMe or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification it leans on instead of Intel’s AHCI or Advanced Host Controller Interface which is still being used by many SSDs.
The drive also has the advantage of its architecture being based on the South Korean company’s 2nd-generation 32-layer V-NAND or vertical NAND. The Samsung 950 PRO SSD is the company’s first such mainstream offering to have both V-NAND and NVMe combined on a deceptively small M.2 PCI Express device. When not being tasked with heavy work, the device sips on just 2.0 milliWatts of power in standby mode. There’s also Dynamic Thermal Throttling aboard to reduce overheating and maintain peak performance.
Samsung has built its latest high-tech SSD to survive 20G vibrations and 1500G of physical shock (duration 0.5m sec). It consumes about 5.7 Watts of energy and supports AES 256-bit user data encryption. The Samsung 950 PRO is clearly targeted at professionals dealing with serious workloads including CAD, data analysis, engineering simulations and so on. $200 is not a bad starting rate for a drive promising to deliver sickeningly fast read/write speeds.