Western Digital launches UFS 3.1 flash memory for new generation of 5G smartphones

Western Digital has unveiled its second-generation UFS 3.1 storage items for a new generation of 5G smartphones. It will not be lengthy ahead of you will have 512GB of storage on your smartphone.

The San Jose, California-based corporation stated its new flash memory chips will provide the functionality and capacity to help the information-wealthy multimedia applications smartphone customers count on in a 5G world.

Western Digital spent $18 billion on factories more than the previous decade, and it is on its 10th generation of flash memory. Every flash manufacturer licenses tech from Western Digital.

The Western Digital iNAND MC EU551 delivers the higher-functionality storage customers have to have to be in a position to use their phones for emerging applications like ultra-higher-resolution cameras, augmented reality and virtual reality, gaming, and 8K video, Itzik Gilboa, the senior director of mobile segment advertising and marketing at Western Digital, told VentureBeat in an interview.

Market researcher IDC expects 5G smartphone shipments to account for more than 40% of worldwide volume in 2021 and develop to 69% in 2025. As networks continue to expand obtainable bandwidth and present decrease latency to allow new user experiences, Western Digital’s iNAND options provide the higher-capacity, higher-functionality embedded storage necessary to energy these fascinating new applications, Gilboa stated.

“We are introducing our second-generation product,” Gilboa stated. “And the key drivers for it are graphics, larger files, moving from 4K to 8K video recording, the advent of 5G and Wi-Fi6E, [and] requiring faster communication, as well as new and novel applications brought upon by AR and potentially some AI training requirements.”

He added, “All of these things are converging on the requirements that we think we can meet with a new generation of UFS 3.1 coming out. When we move from 4K to 8K, we’re almost doubling our memory profile. If you’re recording at 60 frames per second, you get a 600-megabyte file at 4K, and moving to 8K it’s 1 gigabyte.”

Higher functionality

The iNAND MC EU551 mobile storage device is the initial item constructed on Western Digital’s new UFS 3.1 platform, initial announced on May 26 at the company’s Flash Perspective occasion. Leveraging quicker NAND, a quicker controller, and an enhanced firmware design and style, the iNAND MC EU551 delivers a one hundred% improvement in random study functionality and up to 40% on random writes to assistance help mixed workload experiences, like operating several applications simultaneously.

Western Digital also stated the chip has a 90% improvement in sequential writes to assistance comprehend the new 5G and Wi-Fi 6 download speed prospective. This provides customers a improved expertise when streaming wealthy media files such as 8K video, as effectively as enhanced functionality for applications like burst mode photography. And it delivers a 30% improvement in sequential reads that lets applications launch quicker with shorter boot-up time and enables quicker upload speeds.

The device is created to meet the JEDEC UFS 3.1 specification specifications and utilizes the most up-to-date Write Booster technologies based on Western Digital’s 7th generation SmartSLCTM. It also features Host Performance Booster version 2., additional combining the most up-to-date advancements in the regular.

“You can see that average capacity continues to grow, and we’re seeing phones coming out with 1 terabyte this year,” Gilboa stated. “And 8K recording capability — you can question if it’s needed today or not. But we are addressing that need today. And then if you look at the feeds and speeds, as we are moving from 4G to 5G, the 5G is introducing a step function in connectivity requirements from about 100 megabytes per second to 500 megabytes per second today and then going into 1 gig next year — and perhaps 2 gigs per second later.”

Wi-Fi6 is anticipated to move to Wi-Fi7 in 2024, and that is going to provide 5G-like functionality at that point.

“That requires our interface speeds to keep up as well,” Gilboa stated.

Application installs are going to consume up more storage, and accessing that information immediately is going to be critical. Applications like games and AR will have to run at low latencies, and AR will have to accurately superimpose animated imagery on the actual world. That demands processing a lot of information from sensors and storing that info also. That’s why 512-gigabyte capacities will not be uncommon for smartphones.

Ecosystem help

The iNAND MC EU551 is the most up-to-date addition to the iNAND line, which has been trusted by all big smartphone producers about the world for more than a decade. As aspect of its work in the mobile ecosystem, Western Digital continues to work with SoC designers to qualify its UFS 3.1 remedy for smartphone reference styles that present a pretested remedy for producers to integrate.

Availability

The Western Digital iNAND MC EU551 UFS 3.1 embedded flash drive (EFD) is sampling now with volume availability planned for July 2021. The storage remedy is obtainable in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. Smartphones with flash memory should really come out by the finish of 2021.

Last week, Western Digital launched its Ultrastar Edge servers to help 5G networks and other communications in harsh environments.

If you are ever arranging a trip to the Alaskan wilderness and want to stream live video of a bear chasing immediately after you to your mates back home, you could possibly want to take one of these along. The servers can provide higher speeds and capacity for actual-time analytics, AI, deep studying, ML education and inference, and video transcoding at the edge.

Scott Hamilton, senior director of datacenter platforms at Western Digital, stated in an interview with VentureBeat that Western Digital thinks about devices from tough drives and SSDs in datacenters to client and embedded platforms.

“We do some specialized servers, transport devices to transport data from site A to B or on-premises to the cloud,” Hamilton stated. “And that’s kind of a derivative of that we got into the edge servers.”

In the case of the current rugged servers, Hamilton stated Western Digital thinks of that as the remote edge, exactly where customers can get a cloud-like expertise, but not with conventional datacenters.

“We saw we need to be able to provide cloud services in a more remote or edge-like environment,” he stated. “It was a derivative of some of these buyers that had been currently familiar with our devices and our vertical platforms. But we’re giving more of a robust continued capability. So that is sort of the byproduct of how that came to fruition.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz