The Samsung PM9A1 is a solid-state drive in the M.2 2280 form factor, launched on September 22nd, 2020. It is available in capacities ranging from 256 GB to 2 TB. This page reports specifications for the 1 TB variant. With the rest of the system, the Samsung PM9A1 interfaces using a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 connection. The SSD controller is the Elpis (S4LV003) from Samsung, a DRAM cache chip is available. Samsung has installed 128-layer TLC NAND flash on the PM9A1, the flash chips are made by Samsung. To improve write speeds, a pseudo-SLC cache is used, so bursts of incoming writes are handled more quickly. The cache is sized at 114 GB, once it is full, writes complete at 2000 MB/s. Thanks to support for the fast PCI-Express 4.0 interface, performance is excellent. The PM9A1 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and 5,100 MB/s write; random IO reaches 1000K IOPS for read and 850K for writes.
The SSD's price at launch is unknown. The warranty length is set to five years, which is an excellent warranty period. Samsung guarantees an endurance rating of 600 TBW, a typical value for consumer SSDs.