Stefan Mileschin

Western Digital said that it has now completed development and started sampling its first UFS 3.0 storage solutions for ‘5G era’ smartphones. The new embedded flash drives (EFDs) provide up to 512 GB of storage space, use the company’s latest 3D NAND memory, and support its proprietary iNAND SmartSLC Gen 6 technology to maximize sequential write speeds.

The Western Digital iNAND MC EU511 storage devices are based on the company’s 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory as well as an in-house-developed controller that supports a UFS 3.0 HS Gear 4 two-lane interface. The controller supports the company’s iNAND SmartSLC Gen 6 technology (which presumably works like pseudo-SLC cache mode in case of SSDs) to ensure a maximum sequential write speed of up to 750 MB/s.

The amount of data generated and processed (both locally and in the cloud) in the upcoming 5G era is expected to be considerably higher than the amount of data generated and processed today, which will naturally increase requirements for performance of all edge devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, etc.). Therefore, ensuring solid write speeds of internal storage is important, which is why Western Digital incorporated its iNAND SmartSLC into the new EFDs.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13997...inand-mc-eu511