Samsung is preparing to launch its first M.2 SSD with PCI Express 5.0 connectivity. The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI SIG) group of companies has already certified the SSD 990 Pro as Samsung’s new top model. That means the manufacturer has already started production and the NVMe-capable M.2 cards comply with the PCIe 5.0 specification.
The PCI SIG entry confirms that the SSD 990 Pro uses four PCIe 5.0 lanes. At the South Korean Radio Research Agency (RRA), the model has probably already appeared as MZ-V9P1T0 and MZ-V9P2T0 – the SSD predecessor 980 Pro has V8 identifiers.
PM1743’s PC sister
For servers, Samsung has already introduced the PM1743 series, which should use similar components to the SSD 990 Pro. With a self-designed controller and Samsung’s TLC memory (Triple Level Cells), the SSD is particularly fast when reading at 13 GB/s and 2.5 million IOPS. In writing, it still achieves a transfer rate of up to 6.6 GB/s, but only 250,000 IOPS. Traditionally, the PC versions are faster than the server models.
In the case of PCIe 5.0, Samsung seems to be there earlier than with the PCIe 4.0 generation: the previous SSD 980 Pro appeared almost a year later than the first competing models, but was then one of the fastest SSDs in M.2 format.
More PCIe 5.0 support with AMD’s Ryzen 7000
Intel’s current processor series Alder Lake aka Core i-12000 already supports PCIe 5.0, but only provides 16 such lanes. These are primarily intended for the top graphics card slot. Only six mainboards have a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 connection – but if you insert an SSD there, the graphics card only gets eight lanes.
In September, AMD introduces its AM5 platform and Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which provide 20 PCIe 5.0 lanes. All mainboards with the chipsets X670E, X670 and B650 must have an M.2 connector that supports PCIe 5.0.
