Samsung launches the 980 PRO SSD globally

Samsung now officially pitches its state-of-the-art 980 PRO solid-state drive (SSD) at "professionals and consumers who want cutting-edge performance in their high-end PCs, workstations and game consoles". On that note, it is slated to be the storage associated with the PlayStation 5. The OEM made no mention of this in its launch announcement, however, although it did confirm its PCIe 4.0-readiness.

Samsung notes that it has developed its own Elpis controller, DRAM and triple-figure-layered V-NAND so as to best harness this updated interface. Therefore, it may support the 980 PRO's rated 7GB/s and 5GB/s sequential read and write speeds. The NVMe memory may also get up to 1 million IOPS in random read and write speeds, if only in its 1TB SKU.

On that note, the new SSD comes in 250GB, 500GB or 1TB SKUs. Each of them will feature the 980 PRO's new heat-spreader sticker and nickel controller coating for "efficient thermal management". Samsung has set approximate pricing guidelines that start at about US$89.99 for the 980 PRO's base model.