Samsung Develops the First 1TB Storage Chips For Phones (engadget.com)

Samsung has started mass producing what it says is the industry's first one terabyte embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) technology for smartphones. "It will give the company's mobile devices PC-like storage without the need for large-capacity microSD cards," Engadget reports. "It'll be incredibly useful if you use your phone to take tons of photos and HD videos -- Samsung says it's enough to store 260 10-minute videos in 4K UHD." From the report: "The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices," said Cheol Choi, EVP of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. As ZDNet notes, Samsung's upcoming flagship devices, such as the S10, will most likely come with a 1TB option thanks to its new eUFS technology. After all, Samsung started mass producing its 512GB storage technology back in December 2017 and then debuted it with its new phones early on in the following year.

In addition to offering massive storage, the new eUFS was also designed to be faster than typical SSDs, microSDs and previous revisions of the technology. It has a 1,000-megabyte-per-second sequential read speed, twice that of the usual SSD and faster than its 512GB predecessor. Despite all those, Samsung says it'll come in the same package size as its 512GB flash memory, so it won't have to make its big phones even bigger.

Comments

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

That sure is a lot of porn

QLC?

[mentil]

No mention in the press release if this is QLC (quad-level cell) or TLC. It's said that next-gen v-nand tech is responsible for doubling the density, although they generally increase the number of layers by 30% or so each generation, and the chip size is the same. Could be that the 16 layers is double the number their 512GB chip used, although 16 has been the upper limit for years.

QLC would actually be fine for most smartphone users, who only use a tiny portion of the storage anyway, and wouldn't even get close to the ~1,000 rewrite limit (1 petabyte of writes, here). That'll help bring NAND prices down for the enthusiasts who could utilize the higher speed/endurance of TLC.

Re:QLC?

[mentil]

I should clarify that V-NAND is stacked say 64 layers deep on one die, and that up to 16 dies can be stacked for one chip. So there's stacking on top of stacking. More dies on a chip tends to lower the speed, thus why they don't always use the max of 16 dies. Density improvements have been coming from adding more V-NAND layers, Samsung started making 96 layer dies last July, and Hynix is working on 128.

Re: QLC?

[mentil]

Rarely, nand chips will come with thin aluminum heatsinks. In general, no. This is because each chip uses about 1watt of power.

Storage capacity is not the problem

[Immerman]

"The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices,"

Raise your hand if you regularly use a computer/laptop with far less than 1TB of hard disc/SSD capacity.

Even relatively cheap smartphones have had plenty of storage, RAM, and processing power to deliver a compelling desktop experience for years. The problem is not a lack of storage space, it's a lack of a desktop-oriented operating system. A tiny screen and horribly crude default I/O devices don't help either, but bluetooth peripherals and/or a USB-C dock can (potentially) solve that nicely

Re:Storage capacity is not the problem

[mentil]

Doesn't help that most iOS devices use the Lightning connector at USB2 speeds. Copying 4k video over that is a pain; a wireless connection is probably faster.

Re:Storage capacity is not the problem

[hairyfeet]

I still use a EEE PC netbook for work, its running Linux Lite with 8Gb of RAM and 320Gb of HDD...honestly never had storage be an issue, I can always stream video if I want to watch something and you don't need a ton of space to look up parts or test networks.

And I gotta agree with you 110% friend, as I haven't had an issue with storage on my smartphone since like Android 2 (I'm not gonna keep up with all those damn snack names like Gingerbread and Oreo or whatever) the problems have always been battery life being shit once you start doing real work and the UI being crap for anything more complicated than some Fruit Ninja style game. If I'm actually doing work? Its not gonna be on a phone, it'll be my netbook or desktop where I have actual programs built for a keyboard and mouse and enough power I can get shit done without worried I'm gonna be left without a way to get calls.

I thought for a bit there during Android 4 things were gonna get better as the phone I had at the time had a slide out keyboard and for just a few bucks you could get a new back for it with a double sized battery (remember those? I miss those) but of course the OEM never put out any updates and soon everyone was copying Crapple and making sliver phones with weaksauce batteries and that dream died a quick death, now all my phone does besides call and text is play a time waster or watch some YouTube, certainly not gonna try to do real work on it and watch my battery meter run to empty quicker than a Caddy goes through gas.

Re:Laptops

[Rick Schumann]

Hopefully this will also lead to more affordable solid state storage solutions for laptops too.
One problem with that: unless it's on a user-replaceable module, if something unrecoverable happens to it, your laptop becomes a brick.
On the other hand if they can get 1TB on a single IC, then imagine the capacity of a standard 2.5" SSD! Virtually unlimited space for a single user.

I read both of the articles, but....

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I read both of the articles, but neither one mentioned the only thing I'm interested in: how much will this 1TB chip cost?

Cards with 400GB to 500GB of storage are anywhere from $130 up to $250 give or take, so how much is a 1TB card going to cost?

Re:I read both of the articles, but....

[mentil]

This is an embedded chip that will be sold wholesale in volume, then soldered onto phone motherboards. There is an external version of UFS but it went nowhere so Samsung doesn't make them anymore AFAIK. The latest SD card standard is faster in comparison so UFS cards are likely permanently dead.

640K ought to be enough for anybody

[johnsie]

640K ought to be enough for anybody