Samsung Starts Production of 1 TB eUFS 2.1 Storage for Smartphones
by Anton Shilov on January 30, 2019 12:00 PM EST
Samsung said it had started mass production of its eUFS 2.1 storage solution featuring a 1 TB capacity for smartphones. Apart from its massive capacity, the drive offers a sequential read performance that is two times faster when compared to a typical SATA SSD. Samsung expects the device to be used by high-end smartphones “soon”.
Samsung’s eUFS 2.1 storage solution comes in an industry-standard 11.5 mm × 13 mm package and is based on 16 512 Gb V-NAND flash memory dies as well as a proprietary controller. The drive is compatible with SoCs featuring a UFS 2.1 interface that are relatively widespread these days.
When it comes to performance characteristics, Samsung claims that the drive is rated for up to 1000 MB/s sequential read speed as well as up to 260 MB/s sequential write speed. Random read/write performance of the drive is up to 58K/50K of read/write IOPS. The new drive is tangibly faster when compared to Samsung’s previous-generation 512 GB eUFS 2.1 solution, so the upcoming smartphones will offer not only more storage, but also higher performance. Obviously, any eUFS 2.1 device is orders of magnitude faster than any microSD card.
What is a bit surprising is that Samsung decided to stick to the UFS 2.1 spec instead of adopting the faster UFS 3.0 specification that is supported by Samsung's own Exynos 9820 mobile SoC (and it is likely that other upcoming leading-edge SoCs either do already, or will support it shortly).
| Samsung's Comparison of Internal NAND Flash Storage | |||||||
| Sequential Read Speed | Sequential Write Speed | Random Read Speed | Random Write Speed | Launch Timeframe | |||
| Samsung 1 TB eUFS 2.1 | 1000 MB/s | 260 MB/s | 58K IOPS | 50 IOPS | January 2019 | ||
| Samsung 512 GB eUFS 2.1 | 860 MB/s | 255 MB/s | 42 IOPS | 40 IOPS | November 2017 | ||
| Samsung 256 GB eUFS 2.0 | 850 MB/s | 260 MB/s | 45K IOPS | 40K IOPS | February 2016 | ||
| Samsung 128 GB eUFS 2.0 | 350 MB/s | 150 MB/s | 19K IOPS | 14K IOPS | January 2015 | ||
| Samsung 256 GB UFS Card | 530 MB/s | 170 MB/s | 40K IOPS | 35K IOPS | July 2016 | ||
| eMMC 5.1 | 250 MB/s | 125 MB/s | 11K IOPS | 13K IOPS | - | ||
| eMMC 5.0 | 250 MB/s | 90 MB/s | 7K IOPS | 13K IOPS | - | ||
| eMMC 4.5 | 140 MB/s | 50 MB/s | 7K IOPS | 2K IOPS | - | ||
Samsung did not disclose pricing of its 1 TB eUFS 2.1 drive, but since this is the industry’s highest-capacity eUFS storage device, it will naturally carry a premium price tag and so will smartphones featuring the chip.
In addition to announcing its new eUFS 2.1 storage solution for high-end smartphones, Samsung also said that it would expand production of its 5th Gen 512 Gb V-NAND memory later in the first half of 2019, which will enable it to boost production of eUFS drives in general and 1 TB devices in particular.
Related Reading:
- Toshiba Begins to Sample UFS 3.0 Drives: 96L 3D TLC NAND, Up to 2.9 GB/s
- Samsung Starts Production of 512 GB UFS NAND Flash Memory: 64-Layer V-NAND, 860 MB/s Reads
- Samsung Announces 256GB UFS Embedded Storage Solution
- Samsung Announces 128GB UFS Storage For Smartphones
- Samsung Rolls Out Its First UFS Cards: SSD Performance in Card Form-Factor
Source: Samsung
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
23 Comments
View All Comments
AdditionalPylons - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
I also struggle to see the use case for this. I don't think many people carry large video collections with them any more since streaming options works so well. Photo would take ages to fill up, and then I'd be more worried about backup, in which case you would be able to offload anyway.Possibly for filmmaking? For example, bitrates of ProRes XQ 444 from the Blackmagic Ursa 4.6K is 312.5 MB/s (yes, that's MB, not Mb), so 1 TB would be about 53 minutes of video, but you can't get those bitrates from a smartphone camera, and in filmmaking settings people rather have multiple swappable media and make sure to offload to a disk-based production SAN for availability and reliability.
I guess some smartphone buyers would use it as a status symbol, but again I think the potential customers numbers are very limited.
On the other hand, maybe the investment put in such a large capacity smartphone would have people considering repairing the phone instead of buying a new one if the screen breaks. Better for the environement. =)
Holly-Must-Haves - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
"I don't think many people carry large video collections with them any more since streaming options works so well".But you don't actually know this for sure.
I would say that I am definitely not one for overuse of the cloud. I like to have control of my data and not be reliant on the cloud and the associated costs.
Video, music, photos and documents would all be items I carry and use. 1TB+ would be eminently useful to me.
Tams80 - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
"Streaming works so well". It generally does but isn't even available to most people in the world. It means nothing if you can utilise it.Then there's data caps and high prices for the people who can access it. Not to mention the potential security risks. There are also people who normally have access to high-speed mobile data, but don't always and want access to their data when they don't have an internet connection.
Finally, the electronics required to have a constant data connection consume a lot of power. Turn off cellular connectivity on your device and it will last ages. For some people, that's very important.
So, tl;dr: Stop being so ignorant and realise that there are many other people out there with different wants and needs to you. And don't go around saying that their use cases are 'possible', as they do exist.
darkich - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Believe it or not, there are more and more people who don't use any other computer besides a smartphone.I am one of those people.
darkich - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
p.s.https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/smartphone...
.. And that is one of the most PC-developed markets in the world.
You can bet that globally, the trend is much more pronounced
PeachNCream - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link
I'd love to end up in your position sooner or later. I've been neglecting PC upgrades for years as I first moved to Linux and have since started to transition over to phone-as-a-PC, but I'm not there yet and there are a few things I fear that will keep me chained to at least a cheap laptop for the foreseeable future.PeachNCream - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
I'd be thrilled to have affordable, fast storage in the 1TB range on a phone, but I'd also be okay with getting it via removable MicroSD instead to make swapping devices or expanding memory easier. At the moment, I'm hovering at about used 220GB on a 400GB card. Most of it is video content in the 480-720p range but there are also tons of photos, a library of ebooks, a relatively recent .vim of Wikipedia for offline reading and so forth. I have 60MB per month of data so if I'm not using my home's wireless or leeching off a place that offers it for free, I can still keep myself endlessly entertained so that my monthly phone bill remains $20 per 3 month prepaid card from Tracfone.id4andrei - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Especially with Samsung flagships, think DEX. When the smartphone is also your PC then 1TB of storage sounds right.sane_voice - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Will be so expensive that only a handful of people across the galaxy will buy 1 TB devices. It will be more than a couple of years we will see them widespread, when costs come down to something we can stomach.taisingera - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Maybe Samsung is releasing 1TB option because they are dropping the microSD slot on the Galaxy S10.