The MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA) and the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC) announced their joint adoption of eMMC as the trademark and product category of a class of embedded memory module products built on the joint MMCA/JEDEC MMC Standard specification. The MMCA and JEDEC had entered into a joint standard-setting agreement earlier this year. eMMC is the first product standard from the partnership. eMMC describes an architecture comprised of an embedded storage solution with MMC interface, flash memory and controller, all in a small BGA package. It is based upon the industry-standard MMC System Specification v4.1/4.2 and JEDEC BGA packaging standards. With interface speeds of up to 52 MB per second, eMMC provides scalable performance. It also allows for an interface voltage of either 1.8v or 3.3v. Accordingly, eMMC supports a wide range of applications in consumer electronics, wireless, navigation, industrial uses, and other areas.

With the eMMC solution, a host system can now gain access to all major classes of mass storage memory sub-systems, including embedded memory (eMMC), memory cards, or even hard disk drives (via ATA-on-MMC specification) with one common MMC Interface Protocol Bus. This system architecture is far more flexible than that based upon other memory card-only standards. eMMC makes it easy to embed mass-storage flash memory on host systems. The standardized eMMC protocol interface offers designers high performance and keeps technology complexity, such as NAND flash functional differences among suppliers, invisible to the host. This differs from the conventional architecture, where a host system must support NAND products from multiple companies in a generic manner by necessity. The conventional approach also increases design complexity to support company-specific functions for better performance. The design complexity is magnified by generational process geometry shrinks and Multi-Level Cell (MLC) technology.

The benefit of eMMC to the host manufacturers is a simpler product design and qualification process and an overall shorter time to market. Because eMMC is an industry standard, multiple sources of components will be available. Strong industry support exists for eMMC, and several key consumer electronic and cell phone OEMs are implementing the eMMC architecture in their product lines.