New details have been released by Samsung Electronics of its latest line-up of automotive memory solutions designed for next-generation autonomous electric vehicles. The new range includes a 256GB 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, EVP and head of Memory Global Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung’s reinforced line-up of memory solutions will act as a major catalyst in further accelerating the shift toward the ‘Server on Wheels’ era.”
Samsung notes that advanced features in infotainment systems such as high-definition maps, video streaming and 3D gaming, together 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 says its 256GB BGA SSD controller and firmware were developed in-house for optimized performance, offering a sequential read speed of 2,100MB/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 14Gbps data rate per pin. This speed 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 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.