Samsung Electronics unveiled big advancements in consumer solid state drives (SSD) on Tuesday, Sept. 22, led by the groundbreaking 950 PRO SSD at the 4th Samsung SSD Global Summit in Seoul.

Under the theme of “Marching Into the Next Era”, Samsung’s memory experts emphasized how SSD performance is at a “turning point,” both in terms of its technical possibilities and consumer adoption.

Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Brand Product Marketing Team of Memory Business, emphasized Samsung’s focus remains on consumers in his welcoming speech. “Consumers want capacity, performance and value. Consumers stand at center of everything we do.”

Doh Young Jeong, manager of Brand Product Marketing Team, said that “For the first time, customer surveys indicate the biggest issue with SSDs is no longer cost, but capacity and performance.” Global NAND flash memory market will reach up to 84 billion GB for this year — which translates to more than 336 million 256GB drives —and will go up to 253 billion GB by 2020, signaling growing presence of memory storage and SSDs in our daily life.

In preparation for these massive market demand jumps, Samsung’s memory technology is opening the door for consumers and businesses to experience enterprise quality memory storage performance. With Samsung’s cutting-edge stackable and scalable V-NAND technology we can likely expect consumer-ready several-terabyte (TB) SSDs are just around the corner.

The big emphasis for the summit was on the 950 PRO. The 950 PRO SSD promises unprecedented increased in speed and efficiency thanks to its Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) 3.0 interface. It’s also the first branded SSD from Samsung to combine NVMe and V-NAND technology.

The drive comes in a compact M.2 2280 form factor, making it ideal for laptops and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot.

“Only recent have the pieces come together for the consumer market,” said Jeong, calling the new developments in BIOS, CPU and OS support a “break from the past.”

While speeds and capabilities of computing environments and communication technologies continue to grow exponentially—wireless communication, mobile networks, external connectors, etc.—memory devices based on SATA is becoming a bottleneck factor, with legacy technology and protocols limiting progress.

The 950 PRO SSD now is capable of bypassing the legacy technologies and promises significant speed, performance and reliability improvements. Until the 950 PRO, SSDs relied on using Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interfaces and Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) protocol. But the 950 PRO offers up to four times faster sequential read/write speeds and much higher random IOPS (input/output operations per second) than even the latest SATA SSDs.

The 950 PRO currently uses 2nd generation V-NAND and is available in 256GB and 512 GB, with planned expansion to 1TB early next year. The 512GB version of the 950 PRO can perform sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s respectively, and has random read performance up to 300,000 IOPS.

Ryan Smith, Director of NAND Product Marketing Group at Samsung Semiconductor Inc., then took to the stage to talk about how these technological leaps will affect the big picture in our lives. Combined with faster connectors, these new SSDs can reduce transferring 10GB of data on a SATA based hard disk drive from 6-10 minutes to just 10 seconds on a 950 PRO, or 16GB of photos from 177 seconds on a hard disk drive to just 10 seconds.

Faster also means more battery life, Smith noted, explaining how an NVMe SSD is able to finish the same amount of work much quicker and then saves its power when in idle mode, therefore consuming approximately 95 percent less power.

Smith also accentuated how these advancements will soon mean really big changes in datacenters and in enterprise, as well as with the Internet of Things. He explained how NVMe SSD solutions are becoming even more essential as datacenters deal with 4K video streaming and optimization using NVMe RAIDs. He also talked about several non-traditional uses for SSDs, such as virtual reality, crime prevention, remote surgery and traffic management. “SATA’s been holding us back,” he said. Better, faster, more efficient memory means a huge increase in the amount of data that can be stored and analyzed. Thanks to PCIe and NVMe, he said “Think about what industries we’re going to disrupt next.”

Samsung Electronics announced the introduction of the Samsung 950 PRO solid state drive (SSD), designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business laptops and PCs. The drive’s M.2 form factor means that users with ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations can benefit from industry-leading storage endurance, reliability and energy efficiency.

The Samsung 950 PRO SSD is Samsung’s first consumer-ready Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe*) M.2 form factor SSD with vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology; supporting the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) 3.0 interface. With the introduction of NVMe, the first protocol optimized for SSDs, users of the Samsung 950 PRO will benefit from improved performance and power saving which can help increase battery life and potentially reduce operating costs. The drive is ideal for professionals who want cutting-edge performance, higher bandwidth and lower latency from their high-end PCs and workstations, for projects such as computer-aided design, data analysis and engineering simulation. The compact M.2 2280 form factor ensures compatibility with next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot and interface.

“With the introduction of the 950 PRO using NVMe and PCIe, Samsung is able to provide our customers with the memory needed to handle the increased storage demands of tomorrow’s computing systems,” said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Memory, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Consumers and businesses alike can experience enterprise-quality performance and benefits such as speed, endurance and energy efficiency to support the most demanding applications. The 950 PRO is yet another example of a branded memory solution that continues to elevate our portfolio of products and reflects Samsung’s continued leadership in the memory industry.”

Featuring the PCIe Gen.3 x4 interface and supporting the NVMe protocol, the Samsung 950 PRO offers improved random and sequential performance over Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface drives utilizing the legacy Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) protocol. Users of applications that benefit from high input/output operations per second (IOPS) will experience up to four times faster performance than with traditional SATA SSDs.

The 950 PRO will be available in 512 gigabyte (GB) and 256GB storage capacities. The 512GB version delivers sequential read/write speeds of up to 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s. Random read performance is up to 300,000 IOPS, with write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS. It features Samsung’s second generation MLC V-NAND 32-layer 128Gb die with UBX controller and magician software.

The drive was built to last, with AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption to protect data and Dynamic Thermal Guard, which can protect the device and data in inclement weather from 0 to 70 degrees Celsius. It can also withstand physical shock of up to 1500G/0.5ms and vibrations up to 20G.

Both capacities come with a 5-year limited warranty up to 200 terabytes written (TBW) for the 256GB and 400TBW for the 512GB. The 950 PRO will be available beginning in October 2015, with an MSRP of $199.99 for the 256GB capacity and $349.99 for the 512GB capacity. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com/950PRO.