Samsung Launches Its First 500MB/s SATA 6Gbps SSD, the PM830

Samsung's solid state drives have been growing in performance over the last two years or so, and recently the Korean company has unveiled its fastest SSD yet, the PM830, which uses the SATA 6Gbps interface in order to reach transfer speeds up to 500MB/s.

Two major changes had to be introduced by Samsung in the PM830 series drives in order to achieve this impressive performance.

The first one of these is course the new SATA 6Gbps interface, while the latter is the introduction of 2x-nm Toggle NAND Flash support, which will also help drive prices down similarly to what Intel has experienced when it switched to 25nm IMFT Flash.

At the heart of the PM830 drives still stands a proprietary Samsung controller with support for AES 256-bit encryption and featuring the same reliability that made a large series of OEMs, including Apple, to stick with the previous generation PM810.

As far as performance is concerned, Samsung says its new SSD can reach sequential read speeds of 500MB/s, while sequential write speeds are listed at an impressive 350MB/s.

“Samsung’s new line up of advanced SSDs will raise the performance bar to the next level for ultra-slim notebooks and tablets and accelerate growth of the market for high-performance SSDs,” said Wanhoon Hong, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions for Samsung Electronics.

“The industry is expected to quickly embrace SATA 6Gb/s-based SSDs, which also will help increase market interest in 256GB and higher densities significantly,” he added.

Samsung’s SATA 6Gbps SSDs are available in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB densities. Sample production of the SATA 6Gbps 512GB SSDs began in May, and the drives are shipping as we speak to Samsung's OEM customers. A consumer version is expected to arrive later down the line, but the Korean company hasn't committed to a release date.