Computers that come with wheels

By Russell Ruben, WW Automotive Segment Marketing Director at Western Digital for VentureBeat – Automakers continue to roll out vehicles outfitted with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to help cars become safer, smarter, and more enjoyable. Vehicle operations now largely involve electronic systems centered around processors or system on chips (SoCs). Because of this, digital storage has moved into a more important role that is ramping up next-generation vehicles. Simply put, today’s modern cars — electric, self-driving, hybrid, autonomous, you name it — work as they do because of storage.

The automotive market is driving storage growth. According to the NAND Quarterly Market Monitor, Q1 2021, from Yole Développement (Yole), automotive data demand will skyrocket. The market research and strategy consulting company, Yole, estimates the NAND-based automotive storage demand will increase to 4EB in 2021, and should jump to 24EB by 2024, rising further to 78EB by 2027. Autonomous Level 5 vehicles will only be a small percentage of the vehicle shipments in 2027, so the NAND storage growth will be driven mainly by L2-L4 vehicles, which will represent roughly 85% of vehicles shipped. The feature-rich L2-L4 vehicles will provide advanced levels of safety, connectivity, and entertainment — all requiring higher capacity storage. Overall, the anticipation is a 270% CAGR from 2019 to 2027.

Vehicles today are using more data for over-the-air updates, rich mapping systems, high-quality infotainment applications, and advanced driver assist systems that detect roadway activity.

Here’s what automakers should consider when implementing vehicle data storage… Full article