The Samsung PM961 was a solid-state drive in the M.2 2280 form factor, launched in 2016, that is no longer in production. It was available in capacities ranging from 128 GB to 1 TB. This page reports specifications for the 256 GB variant. With the rest of the system, the Samsung PM961 interfaces using a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 connection. The SSD controller is the Polaris (S4LP077X01-8030) from Samsung, a DRAM cache chip is available. Samsung has installed 48-layer TLC NAND flash on the PM961, the flash chips are made by Samsung. To improve write speeds, a pseudo-SLC cache is used, so bursts of incoming writes are soaked up more quickly. The PM961 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 2,800 MB/s and 1,100 MB/s write; random IOPS reach up to 250K for reads and 180K for writes.
At its launch, the SSD was priced at 159 USD. The warranty length is set to three years, which is above average, but shorter than the five years offered by many other vendors. The TBW rating for the Samsung PM961 256 GB is unknown.