Samsung SM961 and PM961 SSD's, coming soon, possibly to AW's

These may appear in the AW models soon, as Dell are currently using the previous model, so it might be worth holding back on buying a new one for a bit.

At Samsung's annual SSD Forum Japan, the company has demonstrated two previously-unannounced high-performance client SSDs. The new SM961 and the PM961 drives are based on the company’s Polaris controller as well as V-NAND flash memory. Samsung promises that the SSDs will increase sequential read speeds to 3000 – 3200 MB/s and will also significantly boost random read and write performance. The drives are projected to ship inside PCs in the second half of the year, while it's anyone's guess if and when these will filter into retail (ala the 950 series).

The Samsung SM961 will be Samsung’s new top-of-the-range M.2 SSD line for OEMs, which will be offered in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB configurations (by contrast, the SM951 family did not include a 1 TB option). The drive will be based on Samsung’s MLC V-NAND as well as the company’s Polaris controller. Samsung is specing the SM961 at up to 3200 MB/s for sequential reads and up to 1800 MB/s for sequential writes, but does not specify which models will boast with such numbers. The new SSDs can perform up to 450K random read IOPS as well as up to 400K random write IOPS, which looks more like performance of server-grade SSDs.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10168/samsung-shows-off-sm961-and-pm961-ssds-oem-drives-get-a-boost

 

Thank-you for sharing this, I was about to place an order on two 512GB Samsung 950 Pro's for my 17R3 which should be here by the end of the week, but now I'd rather hold off until the SM961 gets released as it is significantly faster and also comes in the 1TB form factor, having 2TB in Raid 0 will be perfect. Up to 3,200 MB/s read, 1,800 MB/s write is indeed impressive.The Polaris controller is worth waiting for.

Is it bad that doesn't excite me anywhere near as much as Intel's 3D XPoint which promises to be 1000 times faster than current SSD's? It should be released by this time next year which is making me extremely excited to build a brand new water-cooled 4K desktop gaming rig by summer 2017.

3D XPoint also seems to stack up [sic] well on latency and rewriteability., with speed, density and nonvolatility already in the bag. This leaves only power dissipation as the open question - and of course, cost.

To take full advantage of such a beast, at least five things have to happen:
a) Next generation CPU architectures can dispense with the distinctions between L1 and L2 cache, RAM and main memory, and have a single simple memory interface that's XPoint only.
b) OS's ditto, which will cut out all the inefficiencies of a split memory architecture.
c) Hardware interface specs will need to be turbo-boosted or perhaps fully re-engineered for outboard XPoint.
d) GPUs can devote more silicon to processing and leave the memory outboard, resulting in far faster graphics and GPGPU processing.
e) Next generation motherboards will take cognizance of all the above and should become dramatically more compact as well as much higher performance. This particularly impacts the mobile market.

The bottleneck now becomes the CPU and GPU. CPU clock speeds have remained substantially constant now for years. The issue is heat dissipation.Now, were there a way to turn a XPoint state machine into very low power logic...

 

Hi Daniel1983,

I wouldn't get too excited about Xpoint yet. by the sound of this:

http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/15/intel_xpoint_emperor_has_no_clothes/

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...d-xpoint-showcases-optanes-2gbs-performance-2

 

Thanks for the info. I thought 1000x faster than SSD was a little too far fetched, but even 12x faster is still a massive improvement.

To be honest though, for day to day use most of us don't really need anything faster than 950 Pro's in Raid 0... Personally I am much more concerned with data capacity than I am with speed. Loving the specs of the SN961, 1TBx2 in Raid 0 is more than enough for me to be happy for a long while.

Question: The AW17R3 that's on it's way to me ships with the 512GB PCIe SSD (Boot)--does anyone happen to know exactly what type of SSD that is? I will need to buy an external enclosure for it so I can use it as an external SSD after I install the SN961 Raid 0 when it gets released.

 

Samsung PM951.

 

I wonder how this announcement will affect the price of current product lines. I was eyeing up a pair of 512GB PM951's for striping. I'm also looking at the SM951's but can get three PM951's for the cost of two SM951's, or four PM951's for the cost of two 950 Pro's. I'm not sure my needs (a bit of gaming, photo editing and music production) really warrant paying so much more for the extra throughput and iops.

 

Hi guttsy,

When the new SSD's are released to Joe public the old one's will be heavily discounted, same as happens with phones, TV's etc. For now it's OEM only, or EBay if you can find someone offering one, but that might be 'used'.

I hope they do bring out a faster version of the 950 PRO with the Polaris controller next year, as that will give me an upgrade path in a couple of years if I want one.

 

The problem is whether I can wait that long with a few GB free space.

 

Exciting times and exciting news. I'll be keeping an eye on this...

Guttsy I may or may not have a brand new 1TB m.2 up for grabs. Again, may or may not. Lol.

I'm thinking of going RAID 0 on my other AW...hmm...

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

Pricing and availability!! Both are cheaper than the 950 PRO per GB.

$280 for the 512GB NVMe

$521.00 for the 1TB NVMe

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10437/samsung-sm961-price-and-availability-outlook

 

I was looking for the "place order" button like a hawk for a meal! LOL

 

It's interesting that the Anandtech article says that there's no 1TB model for the 950 Pro or SM951. I've got a 17 R3 on order with a 1TB PCIe SSD. I wonder if there's a chance I could be getting the SM961...

Adding to the mystery, my order was originally expected next week, but has been pushed out until 8 July. I'm going to see if Dell can give me any more info. If it's due to the SSD, I'll let you all know.

 

That is interesting. I'm curious now...I hope you do get the SM961, that'd be nice.

I have a 1tb m.2 Toshiba (although it's really Samsung with Samsung chips clearly writing on it lol) in my XPS and it's just shy in performance than my Samsung 512GB m.2 950 Pro.

I'm also debating if I should just pick up another 512GB 950 Pro to RAID0 my AW or wait for the SM961 1tb m.2 with the new Polaris controller and RAID0 two of those instead?

Hmm...decisions decisions....

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

The 1 TB SSD is a PM951. Weird that no one reports that the PM951 had a 1 TB option (even Samsung doesn't list it), but it does (here's an ebay listing, for example).

 

Correct, which is only available to obtain with custom configurations from manufacturers like Dell etc...

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

Adding more fuel to the fire, it appears that multiple tech news sites are saying that the SM961 is Samsung's first 1TB NVMe drive. For example: Tom's Hardware, SamMobile.

We definitely know that there's a 1TB PM951, with model number MZVLV1T0HCJH. The only models I can find for sale have come out of Dell laptops. It's odd that Samsung don't list it on their product pages. I almost have to wonder if it's a stop-gap measure until the SM961 comes out.

I've just sent an email to my Dell rep to ask if he can get any more info on my order delay. Anything related to the SSD will be posted here post haste.

 

I agree...it's definitely strategy...all good though as I'm looking forward to the 1TB sticks!