The provider of advanced memory technology, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unveils an extensive lineup of cutting-edge automotive memory solutions designed for next-gen autonomous EVs. The new lineup includes a 256-gigabyte (GB) PCIe Gen3 NVMe ball grid array (BGA) SSD, 2GB GDDR6 DRAM and 2GB DDR4 DRAM for high-performance infotainment systems, as well as 2GB GDDR6 DRAM and 128GB Universal Flash Storage (UFS) for autonomous driving systems.
“With the recent proliferation of electric vehicles and the rapid advancement of infotainment and autonomous driving systems, the semiconductor automotive platform is facing a paradigm shift. What used to be a seven to eight-year replacement cycle is now being compressed into a three to four-year cycle, and at the same time, performance and capacity requirements are advancing to levels commonly found in servers,” said Jinman Han, executive vice president and head of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung’s reinforced lineup of memory solutions will act as a major catalyst in further accelerating the shift toward the ‘Server on Wheels’ era.”
The infotainment systems’ advanced features akin to high-definition maps, video streaming and 3D gaming coupled with the growing use of autonomous driving systems have been driving the demand for high-capacity, high-performance SSDs and graphics DRAM throughout the automotive industry.
Samsung became the first in the industry to introduce UFS solutions for automotive applications in 2017; and today, the company holds a strong position in the total memory solutions with new automotive SSD and GDDR6 DRAM.
Developed in-house for optimized performance, Samsung’s 256GB BGA SSD controller and firmware offers a sequential read speed of 2,100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and a sequential write speed of 300MB/s, which are seven and two times faster than today’s eMMC, respectively. Furthermore, the 2GB GDDR6 DRAM features up to a 14 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) data rate per pin. Such speeds and bandwidth will support complex processing of various multimedia applications as well as large amounts of autonomous driving data, contributing to a safer, more dynamic and more convenient driving experience.
In addition, Samsung’s new automotive solutions meet the AEC-Q100 qualification — the global automotive reliability standard — allowing them to operate stably in extreme temperatures ranging from -40°C to +105°C, which is an especially crucial requirement for automotive semiconductors.
Recently, sensor deployment in autonomous vehicles to continuously monitor immediate surroundings has been increasing, and high-speed processing to interpret and predict this data for safer driving is becoming critically important. By introducing automotive memory solutions previously championed in servers and AI accelerators, Samsung is helping to pave the way for safer autonomous driving.
Having already completed customer evaluations, the new automotive memory products are currently in mass production.
