In today's digital economy, the explosive growth of the total amount of data not only puts forward higher requirements for storage capacity, but also a large amount of unstructured data, new technologies and new applications emerge in an endless stream, which also requires faster storage performance to support. NAND Flash has larger storage capacity, higher erasing speed and longer lifespan. It is the core of mass storage and has become the main choice for mass storage. With the popularization of new technologies such as 5G, AI, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, all-flash storage is rapidly being implemented in all walks of life. And mobile devices are becoming the next battleground for NAND.

According to Gartner data, the global demand for NAND flash memory in 2015 was 87EB, and it will grow to 861EB in 2022. In 2022, the social demand for NAND flash memory will reach 10 times that of 2015. In terms of mobile storage, mobile phone storage capacity is expected to increase by 29% annually from 2018 to 2022, and the smartphone flash memory market will reach $23 billion in 2022.

The demand for NAND on the mobile device side has increased significantly. According to the "Macklin Report" released by IC Insights, NAND sales increased by 24% in 2020 due to the strong market demand for notebook computers and tablet computers as the new crown epidemic promotes remote working as the main way of working. After hitting a high in 2020, global notebook PC shipments will grow 19% year-on-year in 2021 to reach a record 268 million again, according to Strategy Analytics.

As cameras, application processors and screens continue to improve, storage requirements for video, pictures and other multimedia applications have exploded. Smartphone NAND flash capacity is rapidly increasing. NAND flash capacity has become one of the most important considerations for consumers when purchasing a new smartphone. According to Counterpoint smartphone storage research, the average capacity of smartphone NAND flash memory will exceed 100GB for the first time in 2020.

China's memory market is developing extremely rapidly. According to statistics from domestic market research companies, in the field of SSDs for mobile communications and computing, China's global demand for NAND will increase from 30% and 25% in 2017 to 50% and 30% in 2021.

With the advent of 5G wireless communications, the use of smartphones will increase exponentially, as will the need for ever-higher standards for the latest models. It is expected that the market sales of China's NAND flash memory particles will maintain a conservative annual compound growth rate of more than 15%, and the market sales will exceed 300 billion yuan by 2026.

Driven by 5G and AI applications, mobile devices pose greater challenges to NAND storage performance

5G enables AI, and AI achieves 5G. The high integration of the two is becoming a booster for China's economy and bringing explosive growth to mobile terminal equipment.

In March 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Promoting the Accelerated Development of 5G", requiring full efforts to promote the construction of 5G networks while doing a good job in epidemic prevention and control. At the World 5G Conference held on August 31, 2021, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Xiao Yaqing said that China has built and opened 993,000 5G base stations in the two years since 5G was commercialized, covering all prefecture-level cities, more than 95% of counties, In 35% of towns and villages, the number of 5G mobile terminal connections exceeds 392 million.

As early as the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by the State Council in 2017, it was clearly proposed to accelerate the research and development of core technologies and products of intelligent terminals, and to develop a new generation of smart phones, vehicle terminals, wearable devices and other product forms and application services. In March 2009, artificial intelligence was listed as one of the key development areas of new infrastructure. At present, artificial intelligence promotes the development of mobile terminals in the fields of smart phones, smart homes, smart vehicles, smart wearables, and smart robots from the dimensions of computer vision, natural language processing, and speech processing. Nearly 100 million 5G smart terminals have been shipped, and AI-enabled mobile terminals have entered a period of rapid development.

5G adds to the complexity of storage, as each mobile device generates and consumes several times the amount of data that current devices do. Higher 5G throughput enables richer content streams, creating infinite possibilities for multimedia and video experiences. As a result, mobile devices will require more complex storage systems to meet speed and storage requirements without increasing power consumption or footprint.

And more advanced AI applications further increase the complexity of storage. Mobile devices must balance the need for additional storage and computing power with size constraints, cost-effectiveness, and battery power when performing tasks such as facial recognition, activity prediction, and enhanced data encryption through AI engines. The onboard AI chips must be able to provide fast, accurate decisions based on local data, and the need for faster storage performance will grow exponentially.

Key storage trends for mobile devices driven by 5G and AI include: higher sequential read/write speeds and bandwidth performance; greater capacity; lower cost; more optimized controller architectures have achieved size, loss Improved performance; more advanced embedded storage interfaces including UFS 2.1, UFS 3.x, UFS4.x and PCIe; and improved reliability and longevity.

Advanced NAND technology meets the storage needs of mobile devices

Ultra-thin, ultra-portable laptops, tablets, and other devices require advanced PCIe 4.0 SSDs to bring a new computing experience to a variety of users across the client market, solving their computing challenges with unique capabilities while maintaining low-cost performance. Power consumption, large capacity, and ultra-thin features.

Compared with traditional storage media such as mechanical hard drives, SD cards, solid-state drives and other storage devices using NAND Flash chips have no mechanical structure, no noise, long life, low power consumption, high reliability, small size, fast read and write speed, and operating temperature. It has a wide range and is the development direction of large-capacity storage in the future.

For smartphones, faster flash memory can greatly reduce the loading time of games and files, and speed up software opening; larger storage capacity can hold more photos, videos and apps without frequent cleaning. storage space for a better user experience.

The continual pursuit of increased storage speed drives advances in technology and standards. eMMC, which was widely used in mobile devices a few years ago, has almost been eliminated in the past two years. Today's flagship smartphones are mostly equipped with embedded storage interface UFS 3.0 and UFS 3.1 flash memory.

Continuously increasing capacity/speed and reducing power consumption/volume are the general directions for the development of NAND flash memory. 3D NAND is becoming the storage solution of choice for mobile devices that require high density, high capacity, and a small footprint. The 64-layer 3D NAND data storage cell stacks layers vertically to build the storage device, which has six times higher capacity than traditional 2D planar NAND technology. In addition, the latest 3D NAND memory devices use a high-performance UFS storage interface that enables simultaneous read and write commands and has faster random read speeds than the previous generation e.MMC 5.1 interface. The combination of 3D NAND chips and a fast UFS interface enables more storage in a smaller die area, resulting in significant cost savings, low power consumption and high performance for AI-equipped mobile devices.