KIOXIA Europe GmbH has started sampling new automotive Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 embedded flash memory devices. The new line-up utilizes the company’s BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and is available in capacities from 64GB to 512GB to support the various requirements of evolving automotive applications that elevate driver experiences.

“The storage requirements for automotive applications continue to increase as infotainment systems and ADAS in cars become more sophisticated.” explains Axel Störmann, Vice President Memory Marketing & Engineering, KIOXIA Europe GmbH. ”UFS is well-suited to support the high-performance and density needs of these applications.”

The new devices support a wide temperature range (-40°C to +105°C), meet AEC-Q100 Grade2 requirements and offer enhanced reliability capabilities that increasingly complex automotive applications require.

Both the sequential read and sequential write performance of the Automotive UFS Ver. 3.1 device are significantly improved by approximately 2.2x and 6x, respectively, over previous generation devices. These performance gains contribute to faster system startup and OTA (Over-the-Air) updates.

Recently, KIOXIA announced the company will begin construction of a new, state-of-the-art fabrication facility (Fab2) at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. It foresees the possible expansion of production of its proprietary 3D Flash memory BiCS FLASH. Construction of the facility is scheduled to commence in April 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2023.

The new Fab2 facility will utilize AI-based cutting-edge manufacturing to increase the production capacity of the entire Kitakami Plant. It will further enhance product quality, allowing KIOXIA to expand its business organically and take advantage of the medium to long term growth of the flash memory market driven by the accelerating adoption of cloud services, 5G, IoT, AI, automated driving and the metaverse.