KIOXIA Strengthens Lineup of Embedded Flash Memory Products for Consumer Applications

[btarunr]

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced that it has begun sampling the latest generation of its JEDEC e-MMC Ver. 5.1-compliant embedded flash memory products for consumer applications. The new products are available in capacities of 64 and 128 gigabytes (GB) and integrate the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and a controller in a single package.

Demand for mid-range capacities in consumer products such as tablets and IoT devices continues to grow, and though the market continues to shift to UFS, there are cases where e-MMC may still be used. The new KIOXIA e-MMC devices expand the available options. A leading provider of flash memory and storage for consumer applications and mobile devices, KIOXIA has been supporting e-MMC since 2007 and was the first supplier to introduce the higher performance follow-on solution to e-MMC, UFS, in early 2013. Today, the broad KIOXIA lineup of e-MMC and UFS solutions provides support across a wide range of densities (4 GB-1 TB).



This latest generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory-based e-MMC offers the following features well-suited to the requirements of consumer applications, including:

• A newer generation of BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory
• Improved architecture that reduces internal write amplification and achieves more stable sequential write performance
• Pre-programmed user data that will now have higher reliability before it is sent for reflow during customer's manufacturing process
• Idle to auto-sleep time is reduced by 100x6 from existing generation to help extend user application's battery life
• Faster performance is achievable through accessing multiple dies inside the device
• Supports JEDEC eMMC 5.1 standard with fastest interface speed (HS400)

"Introducing next-gen e-MMC devices furthers our commitment to reinforcing our market-leading position by delivering a broad, high-performance product lineup, including for applications that continue to need e-MMC as an embedded memory solution," said Scott Beekman, vice president, Memory Business Unit, for KIOXIA America, Inc.

KIOXIA is now sampling its next-gen e-MMC devices, with general availability expected in October.

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[Chrispy_]

eMMC from half a decade ago was typically bad, but not quite as bad as a mechanical drive. Read/write speeds of 50MB/s aren't great, but at least it had several hundred IOPS which is better than the 100 IOPS of spinning rust. Unless you were doing large copies or installs, eMMC was kinda okay as a spinning rust replacement.

I'd imagine these days that eMMC is effectively single-channel, DRAMless QLC NAND and whilst that's definitely going to make a horrible SSD, I'd hope to at least see read speeds approaching 200MB/s even if writes aren't much better. We're talking about budget tablets and phones here, so once an app is installed (likely at relatively low internet download speeds) the actual write performance isn't that important.