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.
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