Samsung Develops the First 1TB Storage Chips For Phones (engadget.com) 72
Samsung has started mass producing what it says is the industry's first one terabyte embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) technology for smartphones. "It will give the company's mobile devices PC-like storage without the need for large-capacity microSD cards," Engadget reports. "It'll be incredibly useful if you use your phone to take tons of photos and HD videos -- Samsung says it's enough to store 260 10-minute videos in 4K UHD." From the report: "The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices," said Cheol Choi, EVP of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. As ZDNet notes, Samsung's upcoming flagship devices, such as the S10, will most likely come with a 1TB option thanks to its new eUFS technology. After all, Samsung started mass producing its 512GB storage technology back in December 2017 and then debuted it with its new phones early on in the following year.
In addition to offering massive storage, the new eUFS was also designed to be faster than typical SSDs, microSDs and previous revisions of the technology. It has a 1,000-megabyte-per-second sequential read speed, twice that of the usual SSD and faster than its 512GB predecessor. Despite all those, Samsung says it'll come in the same package size as its 512GB flash memory, so it won't have to make its big phones even bigger.
In addition to offering massive storage, the new eUFS was also designed to be faster than typical SSDs, microSDs and previous revisions of the technology. It has a 1,000-megabyte-per-second sequential read speed, twice that of the usual SSD and faster than its 512GB predecessor. Despite all those, Samsung says it'll come in the same package size as its 512GB flash memory, so it won't have to make its big phones even bigger.
Wow (Score:2, Funny)
That sure is a lot of porn
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QLC? (Score:5, Interesting)
No mention in the press release if this is QLC (quad-level cell) or TLC. It's said that next-gen v-nand tech is responsible for doubling the density, although they generally increase the number of layers by 30% or so each generation, and the chip size is the same. Could be that the 16 layers is double the number their 512GB chip used, although 16 has been the upper limit for years.
QLC would actually be fine for most smartphone users, who only use a tiny portion of the storage anyway, and wouldn't even get close to the ~1,000 rewrite limit (1 petabyte of writes, here). That'll help bring NAND prices down for the enthusiasts who could utilize the higher speed/endurance of TLC.
Re:QLC? (Score:5, Interesting)
I should clarify that V-NAND is stacked say 64 layers deep on one die, and that up to 16 dies can be stacked for one chip. So there's stacking on top of stacking. More dies on a chip tends to lower the speed, thus why they don't always use the max of 16 dies. Density improvements have been coming from adding more V-NAND layers, Samsung started making 96 layer dies last July, and Hynix is working on 128.
Re: QLC? (Score:1)
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Rarely, nand chips will come with thin aluminum heatsinks. In general, no. This is because each chip uses about 1watt of power.
Storage capacity is not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
"The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices,"
Raise your hand if you regularly use a computer/laptop with far less than 1TB of hard disc/SSD capacity.
Even relatively cheap smartphones have had plenty of storage, RAM, and processing power to deliver a compelling desktop experience for years. The problem is not a lack of storage space, it's a lack of a desktop-oriented operating system. A tiny screen and horribly crude default I/O devices don't help either, but bluetooth peripherals and/or a USB-C dock can (potentially) solve that nicely
Re:Storage capacity is not the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't help that most iOS devices use the Lightning connector at USB2 speeds. Copying 4k video over that is a pain; a wireless connection is probably faster.
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I can see this thing being useful only if formatted in the phone as an extension of the internal, rather than the external storage. So that if the thing has just 16 or 32GB, then the SD card can be useful
The speed would then be critical if the storage is being formatted as internal storage, which is not an option on iPhones or iPads. In which case, we are talking about phones post Android 6.
Re: Storage capacity is not the problem (Score:1)
No they don't...how old are you?
I can currently take 0.4 seconds of slo motion video because the memory it uses is too slow and fills up too quickly. In addition to that, I can only take so many hd photos and videos because there isn't enough storage to keep more (unless I have removeable microsds).
And by taking things, photos and videos, in such high resolution, it allows me to later convert and compress it to whatever I need. In order to do that, I need the system memory to be able to open and manipulate
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No they don't...how old are you?
I can currently take 0.4 seconds of slo motion video because the memory it uses is too slow and fills up too quickly. In addition to that, I can only take so many hd photos and videos because there isn't enough storage to keep more (unless I have removeable microsds).
(gently)Then perhaps you need a video camera, and not a phone.
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Why are you storing so many photos and videos on your phone? Do you need to carry them around and show/view them on a regular basis in locations without data service?
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I'm not AC above, but usually, the reason is that that is the device that captures the images, and the main reason to copy them to, say, a laptop, was storage capacity. Now that typical storage capacity is usually 64GB or above, which is more than enough for all the OS overhead and apps that a phone needs, there is enough space for pictures and videos. This 1TB storage would probably be handy if one wants to capture movies, or TV serials on their phone
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I haven't filled anything close to 128GB, but on WhatsApp, the photos and videos that relatives keep sending me, plus the few that I send them, has managed to fill up something less than 10GB. But yeah, I once had a camcorder, which I rarely used b'cos I rarely had it handy. The phone, on the other hand, is something always there, and the camera's gotten more useful in this age of apps, doing things like scanning checks, barcodes, Q-codes, et al.
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There's always room for improvement but - and this is the important question - how much slow-motion video do you shoot with your laptop? Shooting video is not really part of the typical "notebook experience" that I'm discussing.
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The Ubuntu box I've been building up over time lately boots off a 512GB SSD, and only 64GB of it is actually used. If I hadn't got such a great deal on this SSD it'd be running on a significantly smaller SSD, and I wouldn't feel bad about it at all.
Re: Storage capacity is not the problem (Score:2)
Not relevant. My laptop has 128gb but isn't the device that takes hundreds of high trees photos and videos each month.
When it comes time for me to download a year's worth of photos to process them, pick favorites, make a holiday card - I can't do it. Not enough storage. I have to page in only a couple of months at a time.
My phone also has 128gb. It doesn't have a big operating system, nor Office, nor Eclipse, not my source tree and all the binaries. Pretty much nothing but photos and videos. It ran out of
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Three words: external hard drive.
If you want to keep a huge media library on your phone, then yes, that's likely to interfere with using it as a desktop. But there's no reason everyone else would have to forgo that functionality on your behalf.
Besides, just one of those photos takes up far more space than a complete reasonably powerful office suite from the good old days of yore. Delete a second photo and you'd have room for dozens or hundreds of office documents. Or if you want something more modern, y
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My question is why aren't the major smartphone brands pushing their phones as dockable desktops since they have desktop-like resources under the hood?
You can argue they have bad desktop user experiences and that's maybe true at a Finder/Explorer "desktop" level, but would it really matter for actual applications on an external monitor provided scaling is done right?
You could also argue that maybe Apple specifically doesn't want it because it because it might undermine Macintosh sales. But really, would som
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Forget scaling, just use the external monitor as a second screen at its native resolution - a 1080p TV works just fine as a monitor, and 4k is glorious.
The problem though is not only the finder/explorer "desktop", it's the entire interface philosophy - phone interfaces are designed around the incredibly crude and limited tiny touch-screen interface. At best it's a crude and clunky interface to navigate via mouse. I mean yeah, you could coax it to work for some things, especially assuming you stuck to a no
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Storage absolutely is a problem. I have to buy my wife the largest capacity because she takes pictures and videos nonstop of the kids and family. She can fill her 256GB iPhone in a weekend. I have it setup to upload photos and videos to OneDrive and then remove from the device but even then, she can fill it faster than it uploads, especially if shooting 4k.
I can get away with a base model no problem but my wife can't and a lot of other people can't either for the same reasons. We used to store this shit on
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Thing is, as I've mentioned to above, that is a problem has absolutely nothing to do with the viability of a desktop experience. Compulsive hoarding will always fill all available storage space, but store just a dozen fewer pictures, and you've got plenty of room for a large collection of desktop programs.
Laptops (Score:2)
Hopefully this will also lead to more affordable solid state storage solutions for laptops too.
I could also hope this will feed into lower prices for Nintendo Switch cartridges, but the type of storage probably isnâ(TM)t adapted for that?
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One problem with that: unless it's on a user-replaceable module, if something unrecoverable happens to it, your laptop becomes a brick.
On the other hand if they can get 1TB on a single IC, then imagine the capacity of a standard 2.5" SSD! Virtually unlimited space for a single user.
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On the other hand if they can get 1TB on a single IC, then imagine the capacity of a standard 2.5" SSD! Virtually unlimited space for a single user.
I was thinking in the same direction. I don't care about soldering this chip inside a phone. Give me a couple of these on an M.2 drive.
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Actually, at least some early Switch cartridges used NAND instead of mask ROM, which is likely why they delayed 64GB cartridges a whole year (since NAND prices were sky-high at the time.) At wholesale high-volume pricing, it amounts to pennies, so you won't see games on the shelf any cheaper.
Three-letter agencies should love this (Score:2, Flamebait)
I read both of the articles, but.... (Score:3)
I read both of the articles, but neither one mentioned the only thing I'm interested in: how much will this 1TB chip cost?
Cards with 400GB to 500GB of storage are anywhere from $130 up to $250 give or take, so how much is a 1TB card going to cost?
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This is an embedded chip that will be sold wholesale in volume, then soldered onto phone motherboards. There is an external version of UFS but it went nowhere so Samsung doesn't make them anymore AFAIK. The latest SD card standard is faster in comparison so UFS cards are likely permanently dead.
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Because it's going to be in a phone, it will cost $3000, and you will buy a new one every 9-14 months, and you will like it.
Now, get back to work at your dead-end job, subject!
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640K ought to be enough for anybody (Score:4, Funny)
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I agree, 640,000 of these chips ought to store all my data.