Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Embedded Flash Drive, eMMC/UFS Storage Applications Accelerate Market Growth

Mid Density NOR, Serial NOR, and SPI - SLC NAND Offer Growth Tradeoffs
MONTEREY, CA., July 31, 2014 - WebFeet Research, Inc. has released its revised annual report on the Embedded Flash Drives, eMMC/UFS and SPI-SLC NAND: 2012-2019 (SS450EFD-2014).  The main theme of the forecast covers  Embedded Flash Drives (EFD) eMMC and UFS that provide internal storage functions in mobile, consumer and some compute applications.  Although EFDs tend to provide NAND solutions at 2GBs and above, another storage theme explores the mid-density 256Mbit to 8Gbit battle between NOR, Serial NOR, SLC NAND and SPI NAND.
EFDs are the non-removable Flash storage positioned between Flash cards, found in many of these same applications as SSDs.  As EFDs evolved mainly through versions of eMMC, it became apparent that as SSDs were able to improve their SATA interface speed, mobile eMMC EFD storage lagged far behind.  In order for the EFD to evolve, a new interface was needed that would take on many controller features found in serial high speed SSDs and still keep its mobile  low power budget. UFS at 6Gbps+ provides a better user experience, high speed serial interface PC sync with fast response, high efficiency, and low latency of a SSD combined with the small form factor and low power usage of a mobile device.
This EFD report provides an in-depth analysis of the market and applications for internal Flash storage sub-systems, including the emNAND (embedded NAND components), the EFDs along with their use characteristics of the Flash component technologies and eMMC/UFS.  emNAND is found in over thirty end applications, which includes twenty two applications that use EFDs.

The mid-density storage market presents a quandary in terms of which features of the four Flash memories: NOR, serial NOR, SLC and SPI NAND best suit the twenty different mid-density applications. Component unit forecasts by each density (256Mb – 8Gb) and each application are discussed from 2014-2019, which has never been presented before.

The EFD (UFS) market revenue growth is expected to reach $18.8B in 2019.  In support of these numbers, EFD unit and revenue growth will be driven heavily by mobile Smart and Smart Entry handsets, Tablets, Portable Media Players, Digital Camcorders, Wearables (IoT), automotive and others along with the adoption of Flash cache in notebook and desktop PCs.   NAND Flash technology: SLC, MLC, and 3-bit per cell will each be used for the design-in for these different applications based on the NAND use characteristics matched to each applications’ usage needs.

All the known EFDs, eMMC, iNAND, and UFS to name a few, are profiled in the full report, SS450EFD-2014, 144 pages.  In addition, the report is segmented into the definition, development, and market applications of EFD Storage.  The next sections focus on the market forecasts by application for EFDs and their respective NAND components, the EFD profiles and a summary of EFDs by storage capacity for revenue, units, ASPs, and MBs. Finally, eMMC and UFS after 2016, the main subset of EFD, will be forecast by its NAND revenue and units by twenty+ applications and by vendor market share.  

This report, SS450EFD-2014 is indispensible for any company involved with the Flash storage market and especially eMMC/UFS or Mid-Density Flash. It is available through Web-Feet Research in electronic and hard copy. For further information, to obtain the EFD report, please contact: Alan Niebel (alan.niebel@web-feetresearch.com) at 831.373.1985