Samsung's New 512GB eUFS V-NAND Could Be Bound For Galaxy S9 Flagship
Storage requirements are not getting any smaller these days, and that is especially true in mobile devices. Today's handsets are capable of shooting 4K resolution videos, taking detailed photos, and playing increasingly larger and more complex games. To account for the growing storage needs in mobile, Samsung has begun mass producing the industry's first 512-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) solution for use in next generation smartphones and tablets.
"The new Samsung 512GB eUFS provides the best embedded storage solution for next-generation premium smartphones by overcoming potential limitations in system performance that can occur with the use of microSD cards," said Jaesoo Han, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "By assuring an early, stable supply of this advanced embedded storage, Samsung is taking a big step forward in contributing to timely launches of next-generation mobile devices by mobile manufacturers around the world."
It is likely (though not confirmed) we could see this utilized in Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S9 phones. Imagine pairing a ton of storage alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip (SoC), or Samsung's recently announced Exynos 9810 (Samsung typically uses two SoCs for its flagship phones, tapping its own silicon for models that ship internationally and Qualcomm's hardware for US variants).
Samsung's 512GB eUFS solution utilizes eight 64-layer 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash memory chips and a controller chip, all stacked together. This effectively doubles the density of Samsung's previous 48-layer V-NAND 256GB eUFS solution, offering twice as much storage in the same amount of space.
"The new high-capacity eUFS enables a flagship smartphone to store approximately 130 4K Ultra HD (3840×2160) video clips of a 10-minute duration, which is about a tenfold increase over a 64GB eUFS which allows storing only about 13 of the same-sized video clips," Samsung points out.
Samsung also injected its 512GB eUFS solution with a new of proprietary technologies, including an advanced circuit design and new power management technology in the controller to minimize energy consumption. Samsung says this is particularly noteworthy, given that its 512GB eUFS solution contains twice the number of cells as its 256GB eUFS solution.
As for raw performance, Samsung's 512GB eUFS boasts sequential read and write speeds of up to 860MB/s and 255MB/s, respectively. That translates to being able to transfer a 5GB Full HD video clip to an SSD in about six seconds, which is about eight times faster than a typical microSD card.
