Phison Electronics Corp., the Taiwan-based provider of NAND (Not AND) controller and storage solution integration services, announced today that it has passed the automotive functional safety standard certification ISO 26262, allowing it to strengthen its presence in the automotive industry.

While its technology already features on NASA’s Perseverance rover that landed on Mars in February 2021, in the form of 8-GB industrial-grade uSSDs installed on its motherboard “brain” by CompuLab, the company has its sights on bigger vehicle applications. The automotive storage market has always been a major growth driver for NAND storage manufacturers. It represents a huge, relatively untapped market, with global annual sales volumes for cars in the 70- to 90-million-unit span, the large range fluctuation related to the pandemic and shortage of automotive chips.

Although many NAND storage devices are currently used in vehicles, they are mainly employed in small-capacity applications such as car navigation, driving recorders, digital electronic instrument panels, electronic center consoles, and audio-visual equipment. However, this trend will change with the development of driving assistance systems and self-driving cars, believes the company.

“Modern vehicles are quickly evolving into mobile data centers,” said K.S. Pua, CEO of Phison Electronics. “The emergence of autonomous driving capabilities and other technologies pushes the need for automotive-grade storage focused on data security and ultra-high reliability.”

Phison has over 20 years of experience in NAND controller IC design and module integration, mostly targeted at the consumer, industrial, and enterprise markets, with nearly 2000 memory-related patents globally. The company has over 3000 employees globally, with more than 70% being engineers.

Pua emphasized that building the world’s most reliable and complete automotive storage solutions has always been Phison’s long-term goal. Its strong R&D and customization capabilities have been built around the needs of global automotive storage customers entering the era of self-driving and electric vehicles.

He explained that the company has been building a set of safety mechanisms into its automotive products designed to detect impending failures and notify vehicle owners in advance to ensure that its products are safe. This is especially important due to automotive market requirements and regulations including long customer verification processes or 1 to more than two years, long-term supply contracts that can span more than 10 years, and extremely high product stability standards with a target of DPPM 0—or no failures during product use.

According to data from the world’s largest automotive memory and car manufacturers, the NAND storage capacity required by each car is projected to increase from currently below 1 TB to potentially 4TB in the next 10 years, so the automotive storage market will be a major growth opportunity for the NAND storage industry.

For the past decade, Phison has been growing its market share in the automotive storage segment. Currently, the company says it is the world’s largest supplier of automotive eMMC controller chips, which are widely used for in-vehicle infotainment, cockpit displays, and ADAS systems.

To maintain its leadership position and capitalize on the growth of the automotive storage market, investing in the research and development of automotive storage controllers. At present, the company has a set of automotive storage solutions including eMMC, BGA SSD, UFS, and SD/microSD products, helping to back its claim as the world’s most complete automotive storage solution provider.

Its solutions have passed AEC-Q100 certification, its firmware designs have been introduced into the Automotive SPICE process, and its contract manufacturer has passed the IATF16949 certification. With the addition ISO 26262 certification, the company says it can design and build the world’s most complete and reliable automotive storage solutions.

“As the automobile market leans more deeply into autonomous vehicle technology and computer-driven applications, functional safety and stricter development and QA process throughout the supply chain are critical,” added Kuo Yao Wen, Vice President of SGS Taiwan, who guided Phison in passing ISO 26262. “The functional safety certification is an important point of validation and a milestone in the journey to build automotive storage solutions that lead to safer vehicles.”