The next generation of storage is about to have its biggest drop yet, the Samsung 990 Pro, at least if a recent regulatory filing is anything to go by.
The Samsung 980 Pro remains one of the best SSDs available, but it still has the state-of-the-art PCIe 4.0 interface, which limits its transfer speeds and potential capacity. With PCIe 5.0, however, SSD technology is making the same kind of generational leap that we’ve seen with the best graphics cards and processors in recent years.
O archiving (opens in new tab)with Korea National Radio Research Agency (RRA), was first discovered by Twitter leaker harukaze5719 (opens in new tab)and lists two Samsung SKUs: MZ-V9P2T0 and MZ-V9P1T0.
Samsung 990 PRO SSD (1TB/2TB)It will be M.2 NVMe, PCIe 5.0. 2280? 2580? idk.memo: 980 PRO is MZ-V8P1T00 pic.twitter.com/T1v03JkPSAAugust 2, 2022
Harukaze5719 said they can’t say for sure that this next-gen SSD will be PCIe 5.0 compatible, and no one really can, as we don’t have official word from Samsung on the matter. But it almost certainly will, considering the Intel Alder Lake already supports PCIe 5.0 and AMD Zen 4, which should be released in just a few weeks.
As Wccftech points out, Samsung has already released a PCIe 5.0 capable SSD for servers, the PM1743, and so the consumer SSDs that would naturally follow would follow suit. This is especially true as Samsung is likely to release the new SSDs later in the year or possibly at CES 2023 when PCIe 5.0 capable processors and motherboards will be more widely available, so there will be a greater demand for PCIe hardware. 5.0
And while we don’t know how fast the new SSDs will be, we can expect them to be substantially faster than the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market right now, like the Samsung 980 Pro. This SSD is capable of 3,305.03 MB/s during the CrystalDiskMark Random Q32 benchmark in our Samsung 980 Pro review, while PCIe 5.0 allowed the PM1743 to reach an astonishing 13 GB/s random read speed when Intel demonstrated its Alder Lake chips late last year (opens in new tab).
That’s a greater than fourfold increase in random read speeds, which is how most files transfer under real-world conditions, and will have a huge performance impact on everything from load times to playing the best gaming PC to software updates, installations and more.
Analysis: We’re getting there, folks
The PCIe 5.0 standard apparently took forever to become a reality. Whether it’s Covid lockdowns in 2020 (and 2022), supply chain issues, or just delays on the part of chip makers to get compatible chips into customer computers, the wait for PCIe 5.0 and its promised impact seems like an eternity.
With the release of Intel Alder Lake and the upcoming release of AMD Zen 4 chips, the two biggest consumer chip makers will now support the standard with their latest processors. And since hardware makers are waiting for Intel and AMD – after all, no PCIe 5.0 hardware release makes sense unless the CPU driving the computer supports the next-gen standard – once AMD releases its series chips Ryzen 7000, Component Manufacturers May Start Rolling Out their next-gen hardware and feel confident that there will be a consumer base willing and able to buy these new components.
Just as the extended rollout of 5G in parts of North America and Europe was, until recently, proceeding at a glacial pace, it appears that PCIe 5.0’s extremely slow start could lead to the standard that finally delivers on that incredible speed promise.
