Last week, we were introduced to Samsung's upcoming PM981 SSDs, which should give way to higher-performance parts such as the 980 series. Today, however, it's the slightly lower-tier PM971 platform that has surfaced, which should give way to Samsung 970 series of NVMe SSDs. Remember that the company seems to be moving away from their "EVO" and "PRO" monikers as performance differentiators, and this new nomenclature series should replace it come launch time.

The PM971-based SSDs will feature a 22mm x 16mm x 1.5mm multi-chip package that includes Samsung's Proton controller, LPDDR4 DRAM cache, and V-NAND flash into a single chip. As was to be expected from a more mainstream solution, performance will be noticeably lower (at least in pure numbers) when compared to the higher-tier 980 series.Whereas the 512 GB version of the 980 series is expected to deliver 3,000 MB/s read and 1,800 MB/s write speeds (sequential), the 970 series' 512 GB part should deliver up to 1,500 MB/s sequential read and up to 900 MB/s sequential write speeds - which are more than enough for all but the most demanding users, and shouldn't deliver that different of an experience.

Samsung claims random performance up to 190,000 IOPS read and 170,000 IOPS write, which are in line with other known performance metrics. Initial capacities should be available in 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB parts, though with the advent of higher density 64-layer TLC and QLC V-NAND on the horizon, capacities are very likely to increase in time.