Western Digital Powers Mobile Applications in the 5G Era

New iNAND MC EU521 Features Turbo Sequential Write Speeds of up to 800MB/s; Offers UFS 3.1 JEDEC-compliant Write Booster Storage Technology for Smartphones

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With its new Western Digital® iNAND® MC EU521, an embedded Universal Flash Storage (UFS) device, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) equips mobile developers to enhance the 5G smartphone user experience. An early supporter of JEDEC’s implementation of Write Booster under the UFS 3.1 standard, Western Digital is among the first in the industry to deliver commercial storage solutions optimized for UFS 3.1 5G applications and capabilities.

The Western Digital iNAND MC EU521 embedded flash device allows mobile developers to take full advantage of UFS 3.1 high-interface bandwidth (Gear 4 / 2 Lanes) as well as SLC (single-level cell) NAND caching. It also offers turbo sequential write speeds up to 800MB/s* to better enable enhanced user experiences for applications such as downloading 4K and 8K media, large file transfers from the cloud, and gaming. The iNAND EU521 will be available in March in 128GB** and 256GB capacities.

“Smartphones now demand more performance and capacity as they often serve as the primary computing device for everything from streaming video, playing music, gaming and photography, to payments and mapping,” said senior vice president and general manager, Huibert Verhoeven, Western Digital’s Automotive, Mobile and Emerging business unit. “The SLC caching in the iNAND EU521 with Write Booster offers users several key performance improvements that when coupled with 5G are expected to bring faster movie downloads than ever before. This, and other capabilities make the EU521 a great option for today’s mobile equipment manufacturers.”

“Western Digital’s implementation of the new JEDEC storage standard, UFS 3.1, provides 5G applications with added write capability and improved caching will help smartphones deliver higher speed downloads, accelerate large file ‘saves’ and support other data-intense applications,” said Craig Stice, senior director, Memory and Storage at Omdia, a global technology research leader, established following the merger of the research brands of Informa Tech (Ovum, Heavy Reading and Tractica) and the acquired IHS Markit technology research portfolio. “Western Digital’s effort to meet the standard quickly is intended to give mobile device equipment manufacturers a market-ready solution to choose from.”***

References:

5G Turbo Speeds? We First Need to Remove the Bottlenecks

Western Digital in Mobile Devices

Western Digital iNAND storage solutions for smartphones and mobile devices leverage 96-layer 3D NAND and advanced UFS interface technologies to enable an exceptional user experience. This family of commercial, embedded products is designed to maintain high and persistent performance for data-intensive applications such 4K/8K video, augmented reality, virtual reality and AI. The company also offers after-market memory cards, and innovative data backup and charging devices for mobile users.

About Western Digital

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. As a leader in data infrastructure, the company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital®, G-Technology™, SanDisk®, and WD® brands.

© 2020 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

*As used for transfer rate, 1 MB/s = 1 million bytes per second. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon host device, usage conditions, drive capacity, and other factors.

** As used for storage capacity, 1GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less, depending on operating environment.

***Source – Omdia, NAND Memory Intelligence Services, February 2020. Results are not an endorsement of Western Digital. Any reliance on these results is at the third-party’s own risk.

Western Digital, the Western Digital logo and iNAND are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. Qualcomm and Snapdragon are registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Product specifications subject to change without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products are available in all regions of the world.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including the expected availability, benefits, capabilities, capacity, performance, speed and/or other features of the Western Digital® iNAND® MC EU521. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among others: changes to specifications from standards organizations, volatility in global economic conditions; business conditions and growth in the storage ecosystem; impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance and cost of commodity materials and specialized product components; actions by competitors; unexpected advances in competing technologies; our development and introduction of products based on new technologies and expansion into new data storage markets; risks associated with acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including the company's most recently filed periodic report, to which your attention is directed. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.