The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association is the global standards organization for the microelectronics industry. It has now announced version 3.0 of the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) standard. The UFS 3.0 standard has been developed for mobile applications and computing systems that require high performance with low power consumption.
UFS storage solutions are used in a variety of products such as smartphones, tablets and Chromebooks. With Samsung being a dominant force in the advanced memory technology market it's only a matter of time before it comes out with UFS 3.0 storage solutions.
UFS 3.0 doubles bandwidth, reduces power consumption
The new UFS 3.0 standard doubles the bandwidth from the current UFS 2.1 standard with a data rate of 11.6Gbps per lane for a maximum peak data transfer rate of 23.2Gbps with two lanes. It's also more power efficient with a new 2.5V power supply mode that enables lower power consumption with support for the latest NAND technology.
Simply put, this means that storage solutions based on this standard will be faster while requiring less power. This should, at least in theory, deliver a small improvement in battery life for devices that use UFS 3.0 memory products.
The standard also introduces new reporting mechanisms on the storage controller that are primarily meant for the automotive market. Memory solutions based on UFS 3.0 must support the extended temperature range of -40°C to 105°C for automotive applications.
Samsung started producing the industry's first UFS solution for use in automotive applications back in September last year based on the then most up-to-date UFS 2.1 standard. Samsung was also the first company to introduce 128GB embedded memory based on the UFS 2.0 standard in 2015.
We can be certain that Samsung will soon launch new storage solutions based on the UFS 3.0 standard as the company seeks to further cement its position as a leader in the memory market.
