Automotive Memory & Storage

Understanding the Unique Demands of Automotive Memory and Storage

Automotive systems operate in some of the harshest electronic environments – significant temperature variations, continuous vibration, and exposure to electromagnetic interference (EMI), all within compact, highly integrated systems. Non-volatile and volatile memory alike must perform reliably under these stresses for the duration of a vehicle’s service life. Furthermore, with vehicle models remaining in production for many years, sometimes with mid-cycle facelifts further increasing lifespans, manufacturers require stable access to identical components for prolonged periods.

The inherent longevity of automotive platforms fundamentally shapes the design approach. In consumer electronics, products such as mobile phones evolve rapidly, and component end-of-life transitions carry minimal impact. In contrast, a single change to a memory device within an automotive platform can trigger extensive requalification and validation across multiple electronic control units (ECUs), which may be deployed across countless models, leading to significant redesign costs.

For OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, securing long-term availability, transparent change management, and dependable lifecycle support is therefore as strategic as the initial technology selection itself.

Stringent certification requirements, such as AEC-Q100 and ISO 26262 for functional safety, raise the bar further. Automotive-grade memory must undergo exhaustive validation, reliability screening, and traceability testing to ensure stable performance across millions of operating hours – particularly in safety-critical applications where data integrity cannot be compromised.

Even though these essential expectations are still difficult, emerging trends in vehicle design are making the situation more difficult.

Infotainment and digital cockpit domains place different demands. Rich graphics, real-time navigation, and connected applications depend more heavily on high-capacity NAND-based storage such as eMMC or UFS to host operating systems, user data, and media files. This must also be supported by low-power dynamic memory, like LPDDR4, to ensure smooth rendering, low-latency interaction, and rapid response to user inputs.

Moreover, critical vehicle systems such as EV battery management systems (BMS) depend on small, fast SRAM arrays for real-time monitoring, cell balancing, and diagnostics, where deterministic latency and reliability take precedence over density.

In each subsystem, the memory must exactly match both the data behaviour and the environment it serves.

The Shift to Centralised Compute

The increased digitisation of vehicles is also driving a shift in architecture. Instead of numerous standalone ECUs, new zonal designs group electronic functions into a handful of high-performance compute zones that coordinate multiple domains, from safety to infotainment, through a central backbone. This consolidation reduces wiring complexity, improves power efficiency, and allows for faster data exchange between systems, enabling greater vehicle intelligence and functionality.

For memory, however, it raises the stakes – each zone now handles multiple real-time workloads, demanding high-bandwidth DRAM for active data processing, low-latency SRAM for control tasks, and increased NAND flash density to maintain reliability and performance under heavier data loads.

The Rise of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs)

At the same time, the rise of SDVs is reshaping how the industry approaches long-term design and value creation. By allowing functionality to be defined, updated, or activated through software, SDVs enable manufacturers to simplify production, reduce hardware variants, and deploy shared electronic platforms across multiple models.

For customers, they also offer a more dynamic ownership experience – one where capability evolves over time. OTA updates can unlock dormant hardware such as advanced driver-assistance features, activate comfort functions like heated seats, or introduce entirely new software-driven services. This transforms vehicles from fixed, hardware-bound products into continuously evolving digital systems. However, to support this adaptability, memory and storage must not only meet current technical requirements but also include the overhead necessary to accommodate years of software evolution and data growth.

Examples of these shifts are now evident with BMW’s iX3, unveiled at IAA 2025 – the company’s first fully software-defined production vehicle. Its deployment of “four superbrain” processing units highlight how modern automotive design is pivoting towards centralised processing where data is fundamental to how the vehicle operates and evolves through software.

Meeting the Next-Generation of Automotive Memory Requirements

Memory and storage sourcing in automotive design is inherently complicated, and mistakes in product selection can be incredibly costly. Navigating the complex myriad of technical, regulatory, and logistical challenges requires both deep expertise and reliable partners for today and tomorrow. Avnet Silica serves as that partner, combining a broad line card with supply chain assurance and in-house application expertise, allowing engineers to select the right combination of non-volatile and volatile memory for any vehicle subsystem – from ADAS to digital cockpit.

Micron

Micron directly addresses one of the biggest challenges in automotive design: long-term availability, giving engineers the assurance that DRAM, LPDDR, NOR, NAND, eMMC, and UFS solutions used early in development will remain available throughout multi-year vehicle platform programs.

Micron offers standardised lifecycle support for typical automotive programs, while an extended product longevity option ensures stability and continuity for mission-critical applications with 7–10+ year lifecycles and beyond. This helps to ensure replacements, requalification, and redesigns are minimised, maintaining schedule and cost control.

Devices such as the MT53E1G32D2FW-046 32 Gbit LPDDR4 SDRAM offer bandwidths of 4266 MT/s in a 200-ball TFBGA package with a wide temperature tolerance. It is suited for the latest infotainment and digital cluster deployments, where it can provide high-speed data buffering and real-time access for system-on-chip (SoC) processing.

Serial NOR flash solutions, such as the 1 Gbit MT25QL01GBBB8E12, deliver reliable, execute-in-place (XIP) enabled storage for automotive environments. The Quad-SPI interface ensures high-speed data transfer of up to 133 MHz, supporting applications such as infotainment OS storage, digital cluster boot code, or safety calibration tables.