While the Samsung PM981, leaked earlier last week, might have been interesting with its impressive performance and 512GB and 1TB capacities, the newly leaked PM971 SSD is even more impressive considering it packs 512GB on a multi-chip package which includes Samsung's Photon controller, LPDDR4 DRAM and V-NAND flash.

The same PM917 was originally introduced in a 22x16x1.5mm BGA package but this time it appears to be soldered on an M.2 form-factor PCB. Samsung has previously announced that the same PM971-NVMe BGA drive will be available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities but it is left to be seen if the commercial Samsung 970 will also come in those capacities. Judging by the markings of the drive pictured by Tomshardware.com, this appears to be a 256GB version.

The performance of the PM971 peaks at 1,500MB/s for read and 900MB/s for write with random 4K performance hitting 190,000 IOPS for read and 170,000 IOPS for write. 

While we do not have a precise launch date, these leaks suggest that Samsung 980 and 970 SSDs shouldn't be that far away.