Taking Memory Card Technology to the Next Level! Samsung Electronics’ ‘UFS’ at a glance

The smartphone is essential to the smart life. Evolving at a rapid pace, the smart phone contains a range of different semiconductors. And there’s a specific type of semiconductor in charge of storing the photos and videos that capture our precious memories. It’s called ‘eUFS (embedded Universal Flash Storage), a type of UFS-spec NAND flash memory. eUFS is low power and high performance, with faster reading and writing speeds than the eMMC (embedded Multi Media Card) memory semiconductors used in conventional mobile devices. It is set to be the memory of choice for next-generation smart phones, supplanting eMMC. Universal Flash Storage (UFS): taking memory card technology to the next level!

UFS is a type of next-generation ultra-fast flash memory that applies the ‘UFS 2.0’ interface, the latest internal memory standard issued by JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council). The UFS 2.0 standard was established in 2013, and UFS 3.1 was announced recently in 2020. UFS is a flash storage standard for electronic devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs. It is noted for faster speed, lower power, and high reliability than the eMMC and SD card storage solutions used in conventional mobile products.

What sets UFS apart from eMMC is the method of data transmission. The data reading/writing method is serial instead of parallel, and UFS is capable of bi-directional communication. While UFS is capable of simultaneous reads and writes using the LVDS (Low-Voltage Differential Signaling) serial interface, eMMC is incapable of doing two tasks at once, only able to read or write at any one time, even with a large number of lines. World-fast UFS mass production by world flash memory NO.1 Samsung Electronics

※ Terms ∙ Continuous reading speed: Speed at which movies, etc. already stored in storage memory are loaded (MB/s) ∙ Continuous write speed: Speed at which data such as movies, etc. are stored in storage memory (MB/s) ∙ Random reading speed: Speed at which data is input between a device and storage memory (IOPS) ∙ Random writing speed: Speed at which data is output between a device and storage memory (IOPS) ∙ IOPS(Input/Output Operations Per Second·IOPS): A unit for the number of data input or output operations per second (speed). A unit representing the performance of an HDD or SSD storage device

Flash memory has made large strides in recent years, starting from the USB thumb drives we all know and the fingernail-sized (Micro)SD cards capable of holding large amounts of data and used in numerous mobile electronic devices. Recent developments include the SSD, a next-generation storage device quickly replacing the HDD, and eMMC, the de facto standard for mobile device and tablet storage capacity. Samsung Electronics forecasts the broad changes UFS solutions would bring to the industry as they replaced conventional eMMC with the next generation of ultra high-speed flash memory. Samsung was the first in the industry to establish a UFS mass production system and became the first to mass-produce 128GB UFS products in January 2015.

Then in 2016, for the first time in the world, Samsung began began to mass-produce ultra high-speed ultra high-speed 256GB UFS cards, at least 5 times faster than conventional high-performance micro SD cards. While early UFS products were usually mounted inside electronic devices such as smart phones as internal memory, removable memory card type products were also launched, gaining market attention as a next-generation external storage solution to take the place of the SD card. These products managed the highest capacity and speed of external memory cards at the time, achieving speeds on par with 2.5 inch SSDs (530MB/s continuous read speed). Indeed Samsung pioneered the ultra high-speed external memory card market, launching both internal and external memory UFS products. Samsung then beat the industry to the launch of 128GB eUFS for next-generation automobiles in September 2017, in a bid to expand its presence in the premium memory market to span mobile devices as well as automotive memory. Samsung Electronics’ train of world-firsts in UFS mass production stood out in terms of memory capacity as well. Just a year after the launch of the 128GB eUFS in 2015, we saw mass production of the 256GB eUFS in 2016, then the 215GB eUFS in 2017. mass production of 1TB eUFS began in January 2019, and Samsung became the world’s first manufacturer of terabyte-scale mobile memory chips. And it was thanks to this that consumers came to enjoy premium laptop-level storage capacity on their smartphones without having to add external memory. Faster than fast, ‘eUFS 3.1’: A full FHD movie file stored in just four seconds!

Samsung Electronics became the first in the world to mass produce ‘512GB eUFS 3.1’ chips. These have continuous write speeds approximately three times faster than conventional 512Gb eUFS 3.0 chips (at 1,200MB/s), enough to store an FHD (5.0GB) movie in just four seconds. A smartphone equipped with ‘512GB eUFS 3.1’ memory is able to power through 8K ultra high-res videos and hundreds of photos, making possible an even more convenient smart life. Samsung Electronics introduced UFS solutions into its flagship smartphones in 2015, and has made technical innovation upon innovation while expanding the UFS market since then. These UFS solutions are what make today’s faster-than-computers smartphones possible. UFS solutions made their appearance on the storage scene with a bang, and hold infinite potential for internal and external storage. Samsung Electronics is committed to further UFS solutions R&D to further enhance mobile device performance. We can’t wait to see what high-performance, high-capacity products they’ll shock the world with next.