[Peace&Chips] Samsung's Weapon 'UFS' to Become No.1 in Vehicle Memory

Mass Production of UFS 3.1 for Automotive Infotainment Begins
Expanding UFS Competitiveness from Mobile to Future Vehicles
Focus on Second Half Events like 'Flash Memory Summit'

Editor's NoteSemiconductors, often called the rice of modern industry. Although it's a term we hear every day, it's hard to explain when asked. Peace & Chips will make the complex concepts and overall trends of the semiconductor industry easy to digest for you. Just bring your spoon.

Industry interest in the automotive semiconductor market is heating up. This is because the more advanced technology future vehicles incorporate, the more semiconductors they require. A conventional internal combustion engine vehicle contains about 200 to 300 semiconductor chips, but electric vehicles are expected to have around 1,000, and autonomous vehicles up to 2,000 chips. Market research firm Omdia forecasts that the global automotive semiconductor market will grow at an average annual rate of 12.8% to reach $96.2 billion by 2026.

Given this situation, news about automotive semiconductor-related businesses has been nonstop recently. Samsung Electronics, the number one player in the memory industry, is also busy. The company previously announced its ambition to become the leader in the automotive memory semiconductor market by 2025, and to achieve this, it has been launching various automotive memory products. Last week, it announced the mass production of the 'Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 3.1' for vehicle infotainment systems (IVI), which minimizes power consumption.

Image of UFS 3.1 for ultra-low power vehicle infotainment system (IVI) introduced by Samsung Electronics /
[Image courtesy of Samsung Electronics]

UFS refers to a NAND flash standard mainly embedded in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs. Because it can read and write data simultaneously, it helps devices process various tasks quickly without buffering. Previously, NAND flash based on the embedded multimedia card (eMMC) standard was mainly used, but since the 2010s, the use of UFS-standard NAND has increased, especially in high-end mobile devices. Since NAND belongs to flash memory, a type of memory semiconductor that retains stored information even when power is off, UFS products are called 'next-generation ultra-high-speed flash memory.'

Samsung Electronics has steadily improved its technology since UFS products began to be used. When the UFS market officially formed in 2014, the company successively launched UFS 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1 products in line with evolving technical standards. Last year, it became the first in the industry to introduce next-generation UFS 4.0 products, boasting faster speeds while reducing power consumption and enhancing reliability.

In 2017, Samsung expanded its UFS business, which had been focused on mobile, to the automotive sector. At that time, it was the first in the industry to launch automotive UFS products. The company entered the market anticipating that as automotive systems become more advanced, the amount and specifications of memory installed in vehicles would increase. In fact, market research firm Omdia predicted that the capacity of UFS products installed per vehicle, which was 47 gigabytes (GB) last year, will surge to 158GB, three times larger, by 2027.

Samsung Electronics particularly expects the importance of memory for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and IVI functions in vehicles to increase. Accordingly, it launched UFS 3.1 products for ADAS last year and is now starting mass production of UFS 3.1 for IVI. The company plans to aggressively target the automotive memory market centered on these two products. With its honed UFS technology, Samsung aims to surpass Micron, the current leader in automotive memory in the U.S.

The industry is paying close attention to whether Samsung Electronics will further introduce its automotive semiconductor business at various events held in the second half of the year. Next month, the largest NAND event, 'Flash Memory Summit 2023,' will be held in Santa Clara, USA. Samsung Electronics will deliver a keynote speech and exhibit at the booth during this event. In September, it will also participate for the first time in the international motor show 'IAA Mobility' held in Munich, Germany, to showcase related products and technologies.

This article is from [Peace & Chips], published weekly by Asia Economy. Click subscribe to receive articles for free.

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This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.