Xbox One Architecture: 8 GB of NAND Flash Memory Discovered

The one in the green is the ‘SK Hynix H26M42003GMR 8 GB eMMC NAND Flash’. Click the image to see it in full screen. Image Credit: Ifixit

The internals of Microsoft’s next gen console have been ripped apart in a tear down walkthrough by Ifixit. In doing so a tiny little detail has caught our eye. Among the various components revealed, Ifixit found out that the Xbox One consists of 8GB of NAND flash memory.

The exact manufacturing model is SK Hynix H26M42003GMR 8 GB eMMC NAND Flash. SK Hynix  is a South Korean company that deals in semiconductor technologies delivering RAM and flash memory. On digging through the internet we found out the specification sheet for the chip.

The sheet reveals some interesting details about the flash memory in terms of its density [density is the amount of bits i.e. information that can be stored in a given area]. So the more the density, the more the information that can be stored. H26M42003GM features a density of 32Gb [gigabits] i.e. 4GB [gigabytes] across two stacks. That makes it 4 GB per stack.

Now we are not sure what this flash memory is being used for.  But we have a couple of guesses:

• The system might be storing temporary states [resume/suspend]. It is an erasable memory after all.
• Video gameplay capture.
• Flash memory is known to be quick, so it might also be used by the apps. App snapping calls may be utilizing this.
• Quick read and write access by the OS.

As mentioned earlier, these are all guesses. Hopefully we will get some sort of solid confirmation about its purpose in the coming days. What do you guys make out of this? Let us know in the comments section below.

For more on next gen consoles, check out our PlayStation 4 motherboard components article here and the full review of PS4 here.