Samsung’s latest mobile memory technology is now in mass production, trebling the speed of its current chips and pointing the way to new applications on smartphones and tablets.
The Korean giant is pushing forward the eMMC (embedded MultiMedia Card) technology and is offering cards in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB densities for next generation mobile gadgets. The eMMC Pro memory runs at an interface speed of 400Mbps, almost three times faster than its current product.
The new chips support version 5.0 of the eMMC standard, which is close to completion at the JEDEC body. Key improvements for end users will include faster downloads, browsing and file transfers as well as better support for HD video, large-file games and complex multitasking.
“With timely mass production of our ultrafast eMMC Pro line-up offering a more than tenfold performance increase over external memory cards, Samsung will accelerate the spread of high end mobile devices as the market for devices with larger screens and more multimedia functionality expands even further,” said KyongMoo Mang, VP of memory marketing, in a statement.
The eMMC Pro cards are based on 64Gbit, 10nm to 19nm NAND flash. In 32GB and 64GB densities, the eMMC 5.0 chip has a random read speed of 7,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second), and a random write speed of 7,000 IOPS, plus sequential read/write speeds of 250Mbps and 90Mbps respectively.
Smartphones with 64Gbytes of integrated memory are still a fairly a small percentage of the market and this capability can still be presented as a premium feature by vendors, and one that can boost margins. Most models still have external slots to allow users to add more capacity, though another rising option is to store a great deal of apps and content in the cloud.
Samsung’s handset unit, of course, gets immediate access to its sister company’s innovations and it recently released a Galaxy S III model with 64Gbytes of on-board memory.
Samsung is looking well beyond 64Gbytes for future mobile device memories. Last September, it previewed a 128Gbytes eMMC part which should appear in handsets and other gadgets next year.