The Samsung 980 is a solid-state drive in the M.2 2280 form factor, launched in September 2020. It is available in capacities ranging from 250 GB to 1 TB. This page reports specifications for the 250 GB variant. With the rest of the system, the Samsung 980 interfaces using a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 connection. The SSD controller is the Pablo (S4LR033) from Samsung, a DRAM cache is not available. Samsung has installed 128-layer TLC NAND flash on the 980, the flash chips are made by Samsung. Please note that this SSD is sold in multiple variants with different NAND flash or controller, which could affect performance, the "Notes" section at the end of this page has more info. To improve write speeds, a pseudo-SLC cache is used, so bursts of incoming writes are absorbed more quickly. The cache is sized at 45 GB. The 980 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 2,900 MB/s and 1,300 MB/s write; random IO reaches 230K IOPS for read and 320K for writes.
At its launch, the SSD was priced at 50 USD. The warranty length is set to five years, which is an excellent warranty period. Samsung guarantees an endurance rating of 150 TBW, a typical value for consumer SSDs.