Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first one-terabyte (TB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 2.1, for use in next-generation mobile applications. Just four years after introducing the first UFS solution, the 128-gigabyte (GB) eUFS, Samsung has passed the much-anticipated terabyte threshold in smartphone storage. Smartphone enthusiasts will soon be able to enjoy storage capacity comparable to a premium notebook PC, without having to pair their phones with additional memory cards.
[...] Within the same package size (11.5mm x 13.0mm), the 1TB eUFS solution doubles the capacity of the previous 512GB version by combining 16 stacked layers of Samsung's most advanced 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash memory and a newly developed proprietary controller.
It has been speculated that the 1 TB chips are destined for the Samsung Galaxy S10.
The UFS package is smaller than a microSD card (which is 15.0mm × 11.0mm × 1.0mm), so 1 TB microSD cards could be produced soon. The current record is 512 GB.
Previously: Samsung 256 GB UFS 2.0 Phone Storage is Faster than some SATA SSDs
Samsung to Offer New Type of Flash Memory Card
Samsung Announces 512 GB NAND Chips for Smartphones
Related Stories
Samsung has announced a 256 GB memory part based on the UFS 2.0 mobile standard, and it can reach faster sequential read speeds than commonplace SATA 3.0 (600 MB/s) SSDs:
Samsung announced the industry's first 256GB embedded memory based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard, which is meant to replace the eMMC standard. Samsung says that its new UFS 2.0 drive is faster even than some SATA-based SSDs for PCs.
[...] The new embedded storage module is based on Samsung's own V-NAND technology and comes with a "specially-designed high-performance controller." The latest UFS 2.0 memory supports up to 45,000 and 40,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) for random reading and writing, respectively. That is twice as fast as the previous UFS generation that supported 19,000 and 14,000 IOPS for random read and write workloads.
Samsung's 256GB module achieves up to 850MB/s sequential read speed, which is twice as fast as many SATA SSDs. It also supports up to 256MB/s sequential write speed, which Samsung says is three times faster than what high-performance microSD cards can currently achieve.
[...] The new storage chip should be available in products by the end of the year.
UFS 2.0 parts could potentially reach even higher speeds:
While the new NAND definitely is part of the speed improvement, it couldn't have been achieved without an increase of the interface bandwidth. The new memory today is the first announced UFS 2.0 solution based on a 2-lane interface. The UFS 2.0 standard defines a lane running at up to HS Gear 3 at up to 600MB/s, so doubling up of the lanes gives a theoretical maximum of 1.2GB/s. It'll definitely be interesting to see what devices adopt this storage solution in the near future.
[Note: A comment on the AnandTech story claims "That's not true.Hynix announced half a year ago a HS G3x2 lane solution. And Toshiba must have announced their first one maybe a year before that." -Ed.]
Gizmag reports that Samsung is expected to be the first company to offer for sale a new type of memory card, Universal Flash Storage. The new cards, which follow a JEDEC standard, have the same size and shape as microSD cards but are electrically incompatible with them.
Samsung claims a "sequential read speed of 530 megabytes per second (MB/s)" and, for the 256 GB card (the largest capacity), a "170 MB/s sequential write speed" and "35,000 random IOPS." Gizmag likened the speeds to those obtainable with SSDs. Cards with capacities as small as 32 GB will be offered.
Samsung has announced that it is producing 64-layer 512 GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) NAND chips for smartphones and other mobile devices. The chips boast 860 MB/s sequential read and 255 MB/s sequential write speeds, and 42k/40k random read/write IOPS.
Toshiba has announced its own 64-layer UFS chips ranging from 32 GB to 256 GB.
Previously: Samsung 256 GB UFS 2.0 Phone Storage is Faster than some SATA SSDs
Samsung to Offer New Type of Flash Memory Card
Here's a challenge: do you reckon you can fill half-a-terabyte of memory using only a smartphone?
For some people, we're sure, the answer will be along the lines of “hold my beer while I set my camera to HDR mode and snap some selfies”. So the good news is that from February, you'll be able to lay out the readies on a 512 GB microSDXC card from Integral Memory.
At a transfer rate of 80 megabytes per second, you'd need more than an hour and a half to transfer a full card's worth of data; last year's 400 GB monster from SanDisk (no longer the world's biggest little memory card) still has the edge there, claiming a 100 MB/second transfer rate.
Integral's 512GB microSDXC V10, UHS-I U1 card is fast enough to meet V10 (Video speed class 10) for capturing full HD video.
Integral has put up a web page and a Spec sheet (pdf) for it.
Now we can set them up as media hubs for all.
Two companies have announced 1 terabyte microSDXC cards at Mobile World Congress 2019:
Micron's fingernail-sized card uses 96-layer 3D NAND configured as QLC (4bits/cell) storage and delivers up to 100MB/s read and 95MB/s write burst performance helped by a dynamically sized SLC cache.
WD's SanDisk's UHS-I microSDXC, meanwhile, boasts "up to" speeds of 160MB/s reads and 90MB/s writes.
[...] Random IO is up to 4,000 IOPS for reads and 2,000 for writes for both Micron and SanDisk's kit.
The SanDisk 1 TB microSD card will launch at $450 in April, or $200 for a 512 GB version.
The Secure Digital 3.01 specification defines a maximum capacity of 2 TB (2048 GB) for SDXC and microSDXC cards. The Secure Digital 7.0 specification introduced the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) format with a maximum capacity of 128 TB.
Also at Tom's Hardware, The Verge.
See also: 512 GB of UFS 3.0 Storage: Western Digital iNAND MC EU511
Previously: SanDisk Announces a 400 GB MicroSD Card
Half a Terabyte in Your Smartphone? Yup. That's Possible Now
Samsung Announces Production of 1 Terabyte Universal Flash Storage for Smartphones
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:27AM (5 children)
What's the bandwidth of a stationwagon full of these things?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:47AM (4 children)
https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/09/never-underestimate-the-bandwidth-of-a-station-wagon-filled-with-backup-tapes/ [tidbitsfortechs.com]
I'll assume a vehicle has 75 cubic feet of usable space.
I think the eUFS package is 1 mm thick, same as microSD. So that's a volume of 149.5 mm3 (they are smaller than microSD).
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=75+cubic+feet+%2F+149.5+cubic+millimeters [wolframalpha.com]
You get 14,206,000 of the things. Each one is a terabyte, so that's 14.206 exabytes.
Bandwidth depends on your trip distance and the vehicle's average speed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday January 31 2019, @07:23AM (3 children)
It's the I/O at the trip endpoints that'll kill ya, though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday January 31 2019, @10:09AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Thursday January 31 2019, @10:54AM (1 child)
- hello citizen
- what
- may i see your driver license and the vehicle registration
- sure thing, officer
- what are you carrying
- new generation storage cards, each one of it carries one terabyte of data, cool huh
- are those empty
- uh, no
- oh so i suppose there is no pirate mp3 or movies or porn or stolen smartphone pics among all that data, huh
- n-no, sir, i am not sure but...
- well let's check em out
- sure, take a couple at random and
- every one of them
and they all lived happily ever after
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 31 2019, @05:46PM
"You will stay in jail until you show us the one which contains child porn. We have enough circumstantial hearsay to hold you indefinitely without trial."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:35AM (3 children)
Oh no! Samsung plonked MORE BLOATWARE onto the phone and the storage for the USER remains the SAME.
Disclaimer: we have a Samsung phone where 7.5 of the 8GB is UNREMOVEABLE bloatware. Wishing a falling star would find Samsung's HQ.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:56AM (2 children)
Bloatware does not grow proportionally with smartphone storage size. I would be surprised if there is much more than 10-20 GB used by default on these 1 TB phones.
Samsung also sells this storage to other companies, so you can just get a phone from a different company.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by EEMac on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:22PM (1 child)
It's wonderful and terrible that 20GB of bloat on a phone is now considered reasonable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday January 31 2019, @05:27PM
Thank Microsoft for that.
How much more useful functionality do people really get from the over-10GB Windows 10, compared to the 100MB Win98 ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:53AM (1 child)
11.5mm x 13.0mm
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:57AM
It should be 1 mm thick. So 149.5 mm3.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 31 2019, @11:07AM (1 child)
it is anathema to talk about personal external storage nowadays, but this tech, or even a previous gen one with much less density, in a PROPER drive size, would be nice to have.
A full size sd card is already too small, easy to lose it or vacuuming it up without noticing. If you lose 32 gigabytes it is already a tragedy, what about 1 tb?
Maybe a full size sd card which can withstand some pressure, and so can be put together with coinage in the wallet (what? you only pay electronic? go away friends of the big brother).
A microsd is a joke meant for smartphones, I snapped one in half just by trying to get it out from the packaging (btw, it was a samsung. While your 20000 euro car battery cover plastic breaks just by looking at it wrong, the packaging of a 20 euro sd card is likely to withstand incoming bullets).
The pendrive, ok it begins to make sense. A pity the usb connector is so flimsy, bump into the drive and it disconnects, if you are using it as OS boot it is reboot time.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:52PM
I have never snapped a microSD in half. Maybe you should invest in some soft robotics. If the packaging is a problem, use a pair of scissorhands.
You should not be losing them so easily either. Keep it in a storage case, SD/microSD adapter, or inside the device that is using it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by DmT on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:26PM (1 child)
Old phones with microSD card slot should still support those cards. So a way to upgrade an ancient smartphone with removable battery.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:48PM
There can be artificial limits on the storage allowed by the phone. Recent Samsung phones apparently had 256 GB and 512 GB microSD limits despite the SDXC standard supporting up to 2 TB.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Absolutely.Geek on Thursday January 31 2019, @09:18PM (1 child)
With associated circuitry etc; I want to be seeing 100TB drives become available; obviously I would not be able to afford them but still.
Nice to have 30TB laptop drives also; then I could have everything on my NAS (20TB total, 8 used) also on my laptop with lots of room to spare for future stuff.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 01 2019, @01:18AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_drive_form_factors [wikipedia.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29869&page=1&cid=794432#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(147 * 101.6 * 19) / 149.5 = 1898.119 * 1 TB = ~1.9 petabytes
You will very quickly see a clear path towards massive SSD capacities. Take these UFS chips themselves. They use stacked 512 Gb NAND dies. But the industry state-of-the-art is at least 1.33 Tb, which is about 2.6x more capacity. Make no mistake, they can put 2 terabytes in a UFS or microSD card tomorrow.
If you look at the top SSDs and NAND dies, you can see that we are not that far [soylentnews.org] from getting to 1,000 terabytes in some form factor. Probably not 3.5" though since it is a niche for SSDs.
You can expect 1.33 Tb NAND dies to be superseded by 1.5 Tb and 2 Tb dies in the next couple of years. Within 5 years, maybe they will get to 4 Tb. 128 layers is already being talked about, and could bring the NAND die to 1.77 Tb. From there we would need to see a jump to 256 or 384 layers, and possibly a die shrink. A more dubious way to get there would be to increase the bits per cell to 8. This could screw up endurance, but it might ultimately have some side benefits since one cell would equal one byte. Here's some old talk about 8bpc [theregister.co.uk].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]