The 990 PRO SSD, released in 2023, lacked PCIe 5.0 technology despite competitors having already launched such solutions. Since then, faster PCIe 5.0 SSDs have hit the market. Instead of entering a space soon to be outdated, Samsung has chosen to wait for faster controllers before launching their Gen5 products.
Technically, Samsung already provides an SSD with PCIe Gen5 support—the 990 EVO, which operates at the same speed with both PCIe Gen4x4 and Gen5x2. However, the company might be gearing up to release even faster SSDs that are fully compatible with the Gen5 standard.
Names like 990 EVO PLUS strongly suggest that Samsung will release a faster 990 EVO SSD, though it’s unclear whether it will utilize PCIe 5 or 4. A more intriguing development is the 9100 PRO, which may hint at how Samsung plans to rename its new generation of SSDs.
Presently, the fastest SSDs are nearing read speeds of 14.5 GB/s and write speeds of 12.7 GB/s. Although there remains room for enhancement to fully maximize the PCIe 5×4 interface, these speeds already exceed those of initial PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which topped out at 10 GB/s.
The newly submitted trademarks are currently awaiting examination by the trademark authority. However, the existence of a trademark does not ensure the eventual release of a product. Furthermore, it may take some time before these products become available on the market.
via Sammobile