Addressing the demand of advanced automotive systems such as Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles, Western Digital introduced on Thursday the initial 3D TLC NAND automotive embedded UFS flash drive (EFD), expanding its portfolio of high-quality, high-endurance automotive storage solutions.
The Western Digital iNAND AT EU312 EFD is based on the established UFS 2.1 interface and delivers high capacities and up to 2.5 times the performance of the company’s previous e.MMC-based products, while maintaining the rigorous quality and reliability levels required for automotive-grade devices.
The drive is designed to operate in V2X environments, both in vehicle and infrastructure systems, which are constantly generating and streaming data for real-time and offline data analytics. V2X or vehicle to everything is the umbrella term for the car’s communication system, where information from sensors and other sources travels via high-bandwidth, low-latency, high-reliability links, paving the way to fully autonomous driving.
Connected vehicles require fast and reliable data storage in increasingly higher capacities to support the vast amounts of data being generated, analyzed and accessed by digital cluster, infotainment, 3D map and navigation, telematics, ADAS applications, augmented reality and other advanced automotive systems.
Western Digital iNAND AT EU312 UFS EFD is available in capacities ranging from 16GB to 256GB based on 3D NAND technology, while delivering write speeds up to 550 MB/s and read speeds up to 800 MB/s. It also features advanced memory management firmware and hardware, including robust error correction code (ECC), and is compliant with the JEDEC47, ISO26262, and AEC-Q100 Grade 3 and Grade 2 standards.
Western Digital provides a suite of automotive smart features, including enhanced power failure protection, a comprehensive memory health status monitor, enhanced SLC LUN, and OEM configurable boot partitioning
The Western Digital iNAND AT EU312 UFS EFD is the latest addition to Western Digital’s suite of automotive-grade storage solutions optimized to address the significant volume and criticality of data generated at the edge by connected automotive applications, including its iNAND e.MMC EFDs and Automotive SD cards.
“As modern vehicles add more data-rich capabilities, such as machine vision, 3D mapping, multi-camera and multi-sensor-based systems and AI-driven databases, the need for bigger, faster, more reliable data storage has skyrocketed,” said Oded Sagee, senior director, product marketing, Western Digital. “Leveraging more than 16 years of automotive design experience, including advanced 3D TLC NAND technology built with Western Digital’s own NAND flash controllers, firmware and assembly and test, the new Western Digital iNAND AT EU312 EFD provides automotive OEMs and tier-one manufacturers the scalability in storage capacity, performance and reliability that will be the foundation of future mobility experiences.”
Western Digital is currently sampling storage solutions to OEMs in capacities up to 256GB.
