Samsung Electronics today unveiled the Samsung 960 PRO and 960 EVO, two new V-NAND based, M.2 form factor SSDs based on Samsung's new Polaris controller. The 960 PRO and 960 EVO are designed for users who seek smaller and faster storage solutions that deliver higher bandwidth and lower latency for processing data for everything from gaming and large file transfers to 4K video rendering, data analytics and more on their ultra-thin notebooks and PCs.

Both the 960 PRO and 960 EVO use the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Gen.3 x4 lane interface and are compliant with NVMe specifications to realize effective use of the high-speed PCIe bus and optimize both hardware and software configurations to take advantage of the NVMe SSD technology. The SSDs feature Samsung Dynamic Thermal Guard technology to manage performance during extreme workloads.

The SSDs are using a new controller called "Polaris". It is a five-core chip, compared to the three-core design of the UBX controller used by the 950 PRO. One of the 5 cores on the Polaris controller is dedicated for host communication, while the remaining four cores are used for flash management.

For the 2TB 960 PRO, the DRAM is stacked on top of the controller in a Package-On-Package configuration to free up PCB space for a total of four NAND packages. Samsung has taken measures to reduce the incidence of thermal throttling with the 960s, resulting in the 960 PRO lasting 50% longer before throttling on a sequential read test. Most of the improvement comes from increased power efficiency, but in addition, the 960 PRO and EVO include a heatspreader of sorts on the back side. The adhesive label includes a thin layer of copper.

The 960 PRO delivers peak sequential read and write transfer speeds of 3,500 MB/s and 2,100 MB/s, respectively, and random read and write IOPS of up to 440,000 and 360,000.

The 960 PRO will also offer 2 terabyte (TB) capacity, which is the highest capacity commercially available for M.2 NVMe SSDs, along with 512GB and 1TB versions. The 960 PRO’s high density was made possible by Samsung V-NAND technology and a restructured package design. The 960 PRO promises additional reliability and endurance with the five-year limited warranty and up to 1.2 petabytes written (PBW), whichever occurs first, for the 2TB capacity.

The 960 EVO is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. The new Samsung Intelligent TurboWrite technology (Samsung's new generation SLC caching technology) makes its debut in the 960 EVO and accelerates sequential read and write speeds, that reach peaks of 3,200 MB/s and 1,900 MB/s respectively. The 960 EVO’s random read speed reaches up to 380,000 IOPS and random write speed up to 360,000 IOPS. The 960 EVO comes with a three-year limited warranty and up to 400 terabytes written (TBW), whichever occurs first, for the 1TB capacity version.

Samsung is also introducing the all-new rebuilt Magician software with a new user interface with which users can control various SSD settings including firmware updates. The updated Magician software is offering new features. One of the more interesting features is a secure file erase capability. Using a proprietary extension to the NVMe command set, the Magician software will be able to issue what is essentially a mandatory block erase command (whereas TRIM is a hint the drive is free to ignore or delay acting upon)

The 960 PRO and 960 EVO SSDs will be available worldwide starting October 2016, with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $329.99 and $129.99 USD respectively. Specifically, the prices will be the following:

• 960 PRO
  • 512GB: $329.99
  • 1TB: $629.99
  • 2TB: $1,299.99
• 960 EVO
  • 250GB: $129.99
  • 500GB: $249.99
  • 1TB model: $479.99