Introducing eMMC 5.1: The Next Step in Relentless Flash Innovation

It’s rather amazing that the primary memory solution for almost every mobile application over the past decade is something that very few people beyond design engineers have ever heard about. Referred to as eMMC or embedded multimedia card memory, this low-cost, high performance workhorse of mobile efficiency is one of the largest selling memories in the world and has been for some time. It’s designed for a wide range of applications in consumer electronics such as mobile phones, and handheld computers, as well as navigational systems, portable gaming and even industrial uses. Quickest to Market What’s particularly interesting now is that it is well on its way to a new level of design excellence. The semiconductor industry’s standards group JEDEC has just approved a new specification for this NAND flash technology — eMMC 5.1. And we at Samsung are revealing today that we have developed the industry’s first memory chips based on that emerging standard. Moreover, we’re already in the process of preparing to ship our first eMMC 5.1 products to some smartphone and tablet OEMs. Sure, virtually every memory maker has its own eMMC product line, but we pride ourselves in not only getting to market faster, but in having the largest and most reliable family of eMMC solutions. Samsung eMMC is a critical part of many widely used multi-chip memory packages for mobile devices strapped for design space, as well as being popular as a standalone memory solution in its own right. Improved Performance We have just developed a strong line-up of new eMMC 5.1 products, consisting of 64 gigabyte (GB), 32GB and 16GB densities. The 64GB eMMC 5.1 memory features a maximum speed of 250 megabytes per second (MB/s) for sequential data reading and 125MB/s for sequential writes. For random read and write performance, ours 64GB eMMC 5.1 memory achieves up to 11,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second) and 13,000 IOPS, which are approximately seven and 26 times faster respectively, compared to a typical external micro SD card with approximately 1,500 IOPS and 500 IOPS. Added Functionality Moreover, eMMC 5.1 will please the mobile design community with eMMC’s first command queue function, which enables seamless multitasking activities including the streaming and playback of UHD (Ultra High Definition) video content. Yes, UHD will become very important in mobile video and we want to ensure that devices from our OEM customers can accommodate it this year. Our new eMMC 5.1 NAND solutions also include a “Secure Write Protection” security protocol feature that ensures only designated users will be able to access secured areas of the eMMC. Tremendous Design Flexibility We expect this memory to be popular among smartphone and tablet manufacturers for years to come, sharing the spotlight with ultra-fast, new-age Universal Flash Storage, for a number of applications. Watch here for more about our plans for UFS in the near future. As Samsung Electronics’ memory and other semiconductor components continue to improve at breakneck speed, consumers will benefit immensely from the resulting flexibility in design, control, access and storage that will be found in next generation mobile devices. Memory innovation has never been more accommodating than what our new generation of mobile memory has in store.