Kioxia releases new eMMC storage modules for portable devices

Kioxia has released new eMMC storage modules. The eMMC 5.1 modules are based on Kioxia’s own BiCS 3d-nand and come in 64GB and 128GB models. The modules are intended for small, portable devices, for which, according to Kioxia, there is still a demand for eMMC.

The new eMMC modules According to Kioxia, they are intended for use in devices where eMMC is still preferred over UFS, such as tablets, wearable devices and smart TVs. The company says that “eMMC remains a popular on-board memory solution for a wide range of applications,” which is why it continues to release the relatively old technology. Kioxia plans to continue producing more eMMC modules in the future and says these new modules will be produced in larger quantities starting next year. The company is releasing two models, 64 and 128GB, which seems small, but will probably be enough for the intended applications.

The new, unnamed modules comply with Jedec’s eMMC 5.1 standard, which specifies a sequential read speed of at least 250MB/s. Kioxia does not mention specific maximum speeds for the current new memory, but says that both the sequential and random write speeds are 2.5 times and random read speeds 2.7 times faster than previous models. The device also has a TBW, or terabytes written, which is 3.3 times higher than that of previous generations.

Update: the TBW indicates how long the drive can last and not how fast it is. That’s why ‘faster’ has been improved to ‘3.3 times higher’.