Samsung (MZ-V7SLT0B/AM) 970 Evo Plus SSD 1TB – M.2 nVMe interface review

The first retail consumer SSDs to be updated with new 96-layer 3D NAND non-volatile storage are the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. The 970 EVO Plus are going to be replacing the 970 EVO as Samsung’s mainstream consumer NVMe SSD. Today we are reviewing two of the launch drives: the 970 EVO Plus at 250GB, and therefore the 970 EVO Plus at 1TB. These two drives are Samsung’s attack on both the mainstream and high capacity markets, while the new NAND features a focus more on power than driving down overall costs per GB. Performance per watt may be a key focus of those drives. Get details in Samsung (MZ-V7SLT0B/AM) 970 Evo Plus SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe Interface Review.

Samsung’s offerings for the 970 EVO Plus will range from 250GB to 2TB.

Capacities up to 1TB will be available from today, with the 2TB model launching in April. Pricing for that part has not yet been announced, however it is likely to be at a similar price density per GB as the 1TB.

Transitioning to 92-Layer (9xL) NAND

Last fall, Samsung outlined their plans for transitioning from 64L to 9xL NAND. Most of Samsung’s SSDs that use TLC NAND are going to be updated to 9xL NAND while keeping an equivalent SSD controllers as current products. While the buyer products will remain PCIe 3.0 for the nonce , Samsung’s top enterprise drives are becoming an update to support PCIe 4.0. this suggests that the Samsung Phoenix controller that’s at the guts of their retail, OEM and low-end datacenter NVMe product lines are going to be sticking around for an additional year, including within the new 970 EVO Plus and relatives just like the PM981a and PM983a.

Samsung’s fifth generation, 9x-layer 3D NAND was first announced at non-volatile storage Summit in 2017, and production began in July 2018 with 256Gb TLC dies. However, last year saw NAND non-volatile storage prices crash nearly as good yields and high production volumes of 64L 3D NAND created an oversupply. the main manufacturers are taking steps to slow their transition to 9xL NAND so as to avoid making that situation even worse for his or her profit margins, but they need not entirely halted the method . There’s still strong incentive to supply annual updates to retail products, so it is not surprising to ascertain the 970 EVO Plus exposure now.

Samsung’s 9xL 3D NAND process doesn’t provide huge density increases to further drive costs down, but it does provide numerous performance and power efficiency improvements that make it an honest way for Samsung to enhance a high-end product just like the 970 EVO. The new generation of 3D NAND upgrades the interface between the controller and NAND to Toggle-mode DDR 4.0, increasing the interface speed from 800Mbps to 1400Mbps while reducing the voltage from 1.8V to 1.2V. this provides Samsung the lead for an additional generation, as 96L NAND from Intel, Micron and SK Hynix will only support up to a 1200Mbps interface, and Toshiba/SanDisk 96L NAND is merely at 800Mbps.

Within each NAND flash die, Samsung has made improvements to read and program latency, now right down to about 50µs and 500µs respectively, improving by about 30%. Samsung is that the only NAND manufacturer still increasing the layer count without resorting to manufacturing using string stacking, which Samsung has achieved by making each layer 20% thinner, but this has not affected the write endurance ratings for the drives. Samsung has notably fallen slightly behind in total layer count, with this generation only using 92 active layers compared to the expected 96 layers achieved by all their competitors.

Specs – Samsung (MZ-V7SLT0B/AM) 970 Evo Plus SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe Interface

Samsung (MZ-V7SLT0B/AM) 970 Evo Plus SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe Interface Review

Lately, Samsung has been giving more detailed performance specs than the other consumer SSD vendor, including precise SLC cache sizes and write performance after the cache is full, and random IO specifications at both QD1 and at unrealistically high queue depths. On the opposite hand, we do not have full specs yet for the 2TB model because it won’t be shipping until April, but the handout suggests a couple of small advantages over the 1TB model. The smaller models use 256Gb TLC dies but the 2TB model needs the 512Gb parts so as to suit enough flash on a single-sided M.2 card.

Compared to the first 970 EVO, the 970 EVO Plus improves performance at every capacity and on every metric, but unevenly: the most important gains are to write down speeds, especially sequential writes. The 1TB model is now rated for 3.3GB/s writes to SLC cache compared to 2.5GB/s, and 1.75GB/s after the cache is full compared to 1.25GB/s. Random read speeds are about 20% better, and sequential reads see the littlest benefit with a rise from 3.4GB/s to 3.5GB/s; the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface is preventing anyone from doing far better than that.

It’s interesting to notice that the 970 EVO Plus performance specifications all now exceed those of the MLC-based 970 PRO, except when the SLC write cache is filled. In those cases, the 970 PRO remains rated for a plus of 25–255% counting on which capacity is into account and whether the writes are sequential or random.

Hardly anything has changed about the development of the 970 EVO Plus; the PCB layout is unchanged but the adjustment of a couple of of the littlest passive components. The part numbers for the NAND packages have changed in one digit to reflect the new NAND generation and therefore the date codes on all the main components are a few year newer. The label on rock bottom of the drive still features a layer of copper foil as a token heatspreader while the label on the highest remains just plastic.

Samsung didn’t provide price information for the complete lineup before launch, but the $89.99 MSRP for the 250GB 970 EVO Plus is merely slightly above the present street prices for the 970 EVO and matches what Samsung sells it for direct, so we do not expect any significant changes within the near term for the opposite capacities. within the end of the day however, NAND prices are still in decline and Samsung has had to reply thereto . the first 970 EVO was initially announced for around 45¢/GB but this was move 40¢/GB before it even hit the shelves. Now, it’s going for around 25¢/GB. Further price cuts to the 970 EVO [Plus] are likely over the approaching months, but the transition from one model to a different will cause some fluctuations counting on which one is available at more retailers on any given day.

Where’s the 970 PRO Plus?

Conspicuously absent from Samsung’s 9xL roadmap last fall was any mention of MLC-based drives, and especially Samsung has not mentioned a 970 PRO Plus. the shortage of latest MLC drives for the datacenter or OEMs is not any surprise given how thoroughly those markets have shifted over to TLC. But on the buyer side, Samsung has been one among the few remaining holdouts offering MLC-based SSDs for enthusiasts and prosumers with their PRO drives.

The later launch date of the 2TB 970 EVO Plus suggests that the sole 9xL NAND Samsung is prepared to release to the retail market is their 256Gb TLC; the 512Gb TLC and QLC parts are probably still within the sampling phase for either the memory itself, or the OEM or datacenter drives are still sampling instead of fully production. If Samsung plans a daily MLC part at 92 layers, it’s almost certainly rock bottom priority to maneuver off 64L, after they get both TLC parts and both QLC parts out the door.

We can’t rule out the likelihood of a ‘970 PRO Plus’ sometime this year, but it seems much more likely that we cannot see another PRO NVMe drive until 2020 with a replacement controller which will also bring PCIe 4.0 support. Until then, the 970 EVO Plus takes over the performance flagship position for Samsung’s retail/consumer line and therefore the 970 PRO is merely relevant for workloads that involve sustained writes of many GB per day. For workloads that merely contains tens of GB per day or include some disk idle time for the SLC cache to recover, the 970 EVO Plus is now likely to supply both better performance and better pricing than the 970 PRO.

(Samsung does decide to eventually introduce a MLC version of the second generation of their specialized low-latency Z-NAND, but they’re still within the process of rolling out the SLC version, and Z-NAND’s layer count is lagging behind their general-purpose V-NAND 3D NAND. Samsung has not mentioned any plans to use Z-NAND outside of their datacenter product lines. At the opposite end of their NVMe product spectrum, they’ve disclosed plans for a 980 QVO with QLC NAND, but we aren’t sure when to expect that to launch, or whether it’ll introduce a replacement controller or continue with the Phoenix controller.)

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