Samsung 990 Pro: Indications of a new PCIe 5.0 flagship are growing stronger

It was only a matter of time until Samsung would give the almost legendary 980 Pro SSD a successor. After all, the fast PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD has been around for two years. The first hints of the successor, namely the Samsung 990 Pro, are slowly but surely taking shape. This should be almost twice as fast thanks to PCIe 5.0 connectivity.

Samsung 990 Pro surfaced in database

Samsung first proved that the 980 Pro, which is still selling like hotcakes, is far from old news at the end of 2021 when they surprisingly launched a new edition including a heatsink.

The variant with an integrated heatsink was developed within just three months with the PlayStation 5 in mind, but relied on the same speeds as the original model thanks to the PCIe 4.0 interface, reaching a maximum of 7,000 MB/s and 5,100 MB/s in sequential read and write, respectively.

In the meantime, however, more and more PCIe 5.0 SSDs are taking concrete shape, like the Adata XPG or the MSI prototype, which promise speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s read and 12,000 MB/s write.

Now, clues are thickening about a Samsung 990 Pro, which has now surfaced for the first time with South Korean certifiers. Twitter user @harukaze5719 shows a screenshot of the entry from August 02, 2022, which announces a new SSD from Samsung with the type designations MZ-V9P1T0 and MZ-V9P2T0.

V9 stands for the new generation, while 1T and 2T indicate the storage capacity (1 TB and 2 TB, respectively). For comparison: The 980 Pro with a terabyte capacity officially goes by the name MZ-V8P1T0BW.

Samsung 990 Pro with PCIe 5.0 and in M.2 format

Furthermore, the Twitter user writes that the Samsung 990 Pro will be offered in M.2 format and with the new PCIe 5.0 interface. Both are of course almost certain, since the predecessor already fully utilizes the PCIe 4.0 x4 standard.

Samsung has already used a correspondingly connected SSD in the server segment with the PM1743 and already has the necessary technology internally. However, the model is only available in the 2.5-inch U.2 and E3.S Ruler formats.

The enterprise SSD with PCIe 5.0 connection achieves up to 13 GB/s and 2,500K input/output operations per second (IOPS) in read mode. At least up to 6.6 GByte/s and 250K IOPS are supposed to be possible in write mode.

However, concrete details about the Samsung 990 Pro are currently still scarce. However, the certification indicates that an announcement should be coming soon. And who knows? Maybe Samsung will come up with a nice surprise at the currently taking place Flash Memory Summit 2022.