2013-12-18

eMMC Supports Automotive Infotainment

December 2013, Greenliant has just introduced an industrial/automotive grade targeted eMMC NAND Flash SSD with a small form factor BGA assembly. Available in the 4G-32G configurations of MLC NAND, with future products approaching 128G, the products address the growing memory needs for in-cabin applications.

 

High density memory has been a challenge in the automotive arena due to temperature and power specifications. Leveraging their proprietary designs and controllers that have been a mainstay of the industrial embedded marketplace, the new designs address the extended temperature requirements of -40C to +85C for the in-cabin applications. The eMMC interface is compliant with the JDEC 4.0 eMMC and will soon be compliant with the eMMC v5.0 specification ( jesd84-b50 ) that was published in October 2013.

 

These designs address the AEC-Q100 lite specification as well as having full automotive PPAP documentation support. Designed for a 3-4 yr product life cycle, the system is designed for compliance with the soft re-qualification aspects from AEC and allow for next generation products to replacement pieces for existing designs as long as there is backward compatibility for form and function. All the Greenliant eMMC NANDrive SSDs use a common 14mm x 18mm 100-ball package with a fixed footprint that has a 1mm ball pitch for increased reliability.



Greenliant eMMC NANDrive SSD 14mmx18mm BGA



In order to address the needs of the 18-30mos qualification cycle, and provide parts for the reliability and error testing needs, these designs are run in larger lots than standard commercial parts. The manufacturing operation is ISO9001:2008 certifies and is made in an ISO/TS 16949:2009 facility. This improved and tested reliability allows the memory to be used in navigation/GPS, automotive blackbox, handsfree support, dashboard & heads-up display applications and the growing infotainment & interior control memory functions. These high density modules are replacing the interim solution of rotating media based HDDs in the cars.

 

The cost driver for these modules are from the prevalent use of the eMMC interface for SSDs that are the baseline for ARM and Intel based mobile processor, which have the high mobile device and consumer volumes behind them. Due to the data retention and endurance requirements (number of write cycles) that are needed for an automotive life time product, these modules will remain in MLC technology, and just increase in density, rather than be able to take advantage of additional devices capacity and cost scaling available with TLC NAND.

The Greenliant GLS85VM series eMMC NANDrive SSDs are currently available through the standard channel. To accompany the parts, samples and evaluation boards are available.