Kioxia Sampling Next-Gen Up to 128GB e-MMC V. 5.1-Compliant Embedded Flash Memory Products

Kioxia Corporation announced sampling ^[1] of higher performing JEDEC e-MMC Ver. 5.1 ^[2] – compliant embedded flash memory products for consumer applications.

These products integrate a newer version of the company’s BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory ^[3] and a controller in a single package, reducing processor workload and improving ease of use. Both 64 and 128GB products will be available.

As the market continues to shift to UFS ^[4], there are cases where e-MMC may still be used. This includes consumer products with mid-range storage requirements such as tablets, personal computers, POS devices and other portable handheld devices, as well as smart TVs and smart NICs. The company continues to reinforce its position by delivering a broad, high-performance product lineup and expanding the available options for these applications. These devices improve sequential and random write performance by approximately 2.5x and random read performance by approximately 2.7x over previous-gen devices ^[3]. Additionally, TBW ^[5] is improved by approximately 3.3x over previous-gen devices, in correspondence with an enhanced area setting ^[6] for whole e-MMC area.

The firm is sampling its next-gen e-MMC devices, with mass production expected in spring of 2024.

^[1] The company’s newest devices are supported in 2 capacities: 64 and 128GB. Sample shipments of the 64GB device began this month, with the 128GB device scheduled to follow after October. Spec of the samples may differ from commercial products.
^[2] e-MMC (embedded Multi Media Card): One of standard specs of embedded flash memory defined by JEDEC. The new product supports the command queuing and secure write protection functions which is specified as an option in JEDEC Ver. 5.1.
^[3] Compared to Kioxia’s previous-gen devices ‘THGAMSG9T24BAIL’, ‘THGAMST0T24BAIL’.
^[4] Universal Flash Storage (UFS) is a product category for a class of embedded memory products built to the JEDEC UFS standard specification. Due to its serial interface, UFS supports full duplexing, which enables both concurrent reading and writing between the host processor and UFS device.
^[5] TBW or Terabytes Written measures how many cumulative writes that a drive can expect to complete over its lifespan.
^[6] If Enhanced Area is set, the total configurable consumer-usable capacity will be reduced.