Samsung has begun mass production of its latest V-NAND based mobile storage solution. Conforming to the eUFS 3.0 standard, Samsung’s latest chips pair eight layers of 512Gb dies with a high-performance controller into a tiny 512 GB chip suitable for thin phones and tablets.
Samsung claims its eUFS (embedded Universal Flash Storage) 3.0 chips offer up to twice the sequential performance of previous generation eUFS 2.1 storage and 20-times the performance of a typical micro SD card (~100 IOPS though some are faster). Specifically, the 512GB eUFS 3.0 chip offers up to 2,100 MB/s sequential read, 410 MB/s sequential write, 63,000 random read, and 68,000 random write speeds. The chart below compares eUFS 3.0, eUFS 2.1, eMMC 5.1, and a M.2 NVMe SSD.
| Samsung eUFS 3.0 | Samsung 1TB eUFS 2.1 | Samsung 512GB eUFS 2.0 | MyDigitalSSD SBX M.2 NVMe | eMMC 5.1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 2,100 MB/s | 1,000 MB/s | 860 MB/s | 1,600 MB/s | 250 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 410 MB/s | 260 MB/s | 255 MB/s | 1,300 MB/s | 125 MB/s |
| Random Read IOPS | 63,000 | 58,000 | 42,000 | 240,000+ | 11,000 |
| Random Write IOPS | 68,000 | 50,000 | 40,000 | 180,000+ | 13,000 |
eUFS 3.0, eUFS 2.1, and eMMC 5.1 numbers courtesy Samsung. NVME PCI-E x2 SSD numbers are from PC Perspective in our review of the drive. For further comparison typical modern SATA SSD tend to be around 550 MB/s for sequentials and 95,000 IOPS.
Smartphone and tablets utilizing eUFS 3.0 should end up being notably faster than previous storage solutions. Interestingly, Samsung has managed to pull off sequential read performance that rivals much larger multi-chip NVME PCI-E x2 M.2 solid state drives though writes do not come close to those drives due to the number of chips/channels being much higher on the M.2 form factor whereas the eUFS 3.0 is limited to a single chip and limited layers to spread writes across. Random read and write performance is respectable with eUFS 3.0 but again not anywhere close to PCI-E/NVMe M.2 drives. Compared to a SATA SSD however, eUFS 3.0 looks much better offering significantly faster sequential reads (writes are fairly low to be competitive though) and with random performance that starts to approach budget and/or low capacity SATA SSD performance. That’s not to say computer users should give up M.2 for eUFS, of course, but that smartphone storage is rapidly improving and starting to close the gap between the platforms / form factors.
Samsung will be launching 512 GB and 128 GB eUFS 3.0 chips imminently with 1 TB and 256 GB chips to follow in the second half of 2019. We may have to wait until next year to see the new eUFS 3.0 standard catch on with most smartphones launching in 2019 already announced last month at Mobile World Congress. It is possible that some of those phones will use the faster internal storage, like Samsung’s own Galaxy Fold, but most will likely be based on eUFS 2.1.
Related reading:
