Samsung unveils 960 Pro and 960 EVO SSDs at its global SSD summit 2016

Samsung has launched the next-gen Solid State Drives — 960 EVO and 960 Pro — at its 5th annual SSD Global Summit conference in Seoul, South Korea. Among the two, Samsung 960 Pro is a successor to the last year’s 950 Pro with under-the-hood improvements and is claimed by the company to be the fastest M.2 NVMe SSD. The ‘Pro’ version is also more powerful than the ‘EVO’ variant. Like the predecessors, these two also come in different storage options.
According to Samsung, 960 Pro will be available in three versions as per capacity, 2TB, 1TB and 512GB; while 960 EVO SSD will come in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. It is also likely that Samsung launches SSDs in other storage options as well like it did for 850 EVO SSD. In Juy this year, Samsung launched 4TB storage variant of 850 EVO SSD, which was over a year ago.
Both Samsung SSD 960 Pro and the SSD 960 EVO SSDs are based on M.2 form-factor, which was first introduced in Samsung 950 Pro. Like other modern SSDs, they too aim to deliver higher bandwidth with lower latency to process large data for gaming, transfer 4K video resolution and more.
The SSDs also make use of the company’s third-generation 3D V-NAND (or vertical-NAND) flash memory tech, which has 48 layers as compared to the second-gen chip’s 32-layers. The V-NAND technology lets Samsung stuff more storage space in a small form factor with more efficient power use. They are also powered by the PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) Gen 3 interface.
As for the read and write speeds the Samsung 960 Pro achieves sequential read/write speeds of up to 3500Mbps/ 2100Mbps and random read/write IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) of up to 4,40,000 and 3,60,000 IOPS.
On the other hand, the Samsung 960 EVO debuts with the company’s new Intelligent TurboWrite technology that is said to ‘accelerate’ sequential read and write speeds. The SSD has a sequential read/write speed of 3200Mbps and 1900Mbps respectively, while the random read and write speed reaches 3,80,000 IOPS and 3,60,000 IOPS.
Samsung 950 Pro comes with a Sequential read/write speed of up to 2,500 Mbps and 1500 Mbps respectively. The random read/write speed peaked at 3,00,000 IOPS and 1,10,000 IOPS. Samsung at last year’s summit launched the 950 Pro, while in 2014 it announced the SSD 850 Pro. The company has also previously launched the 850 EVO and 750 EVO SSDs.
The Samsung 960 Pro and 960 EVO will be available worldwide starting next month at base price of $329.99 and $129.99 respectively. Samsung 960 Pro will be available worldwide starting next month at base price of $329.99 for 512GB. The 1TB and 2TB version will cost $629 and $1299 respectively. The 960 EVO costs $129.99 for 250GB, $249 for 500GB and $479 for 1TB respectively.