Universal Flash Storage (UFS) is a flash storage specification for digital cameras,

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s and

consumer electronic Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually ...

devices. It was designed to bring higher data transfer speed and increased reliability to flash memory storage, while reducing market confusion and removing the need for different adapters for different types of cards. The standard encompasses both packages permanently attached (embedded) within a device (), and removable UFS

memory card A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a so ...

Overview

UFS uses

NAND flash Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

. It may use multiple stacked 3D TLC NAND flash

dies Dies may refer to: * Dies (deity), the Roman counterpart of the Greek goddess Hemera, the personification of day, daughter of Nox (Night) and Erebus (Darkness). * Albert Christoph Dies (1755–1822), German painter, composer, and biographer * Jos ...

(integrated circuits) with an integrated controller. The proposed

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

specification is supported by consumer electronics companies such as

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

, Sony Ericsson,

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Micron The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American spelling), also commonly known as a micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Unit ...

, and

SK Hynix SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Hynix is the world's second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world's third-largest semiconductor company ...

. UFS is positioned as a replacement for and SD cards. The electrical interface for UFS uses the

M-PHY M-PHY is a high speed data communications physical layer protocol standard developed by the MIPI Alliance, PHY Working group, and targeted at the needs of mobile multimedia devices. The specification's details are proprietary to MIPI member organ ...

, developed by the

MIPI Alliance MIPI Alliance is a global business alliance that develops technical specifications for the mobile ecosystem, particularly smart phones but including mobile-influenced industries. MIPI was founded in 2003 by ARM, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, STMicroele ...

, a high-speed serial interface targeting 2.9 Gbit/s per lane with up-scalability to 5.8 Gbit/s per lane. UFS implements a full-duplex serial LVDS interface that scales better to higher bandwidths than the 8-lane parallel and half-duplex interface of . Unlike eMMC, Universal Flash Storage is based on the SCSI architectural model and supports SCSI Tagged Command Queuing. The standard is developed by, and available from, the

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association is an independent semiconductor engineering trade organization and standardization body headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia, United States. JEDEC has over 300 members, including some of the w ...

. The

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

supports UFS.

History

In 2010, the Universal Flash Storage Association (UFSA) was founded as an open

trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific Industry (economics), industry. An industry tra ...

to promote the UFS standard. In September 2013, JEDEC published JESD220B UFS 2.0 (update to UFS v1.1 standard published in June 2012). JESD220B Universal Flash Storage v2.0 offers increased link bandwidth for performance improvement, a security features extension and additional power saving features over the UFS v1.1. On 30 January 2018 JEDEC published version 3.0 of the UFS standard, with a higher 11.6 Gbit/s data rate per lane (1450 MB/s) with the use of MIPI M-PHY v4.1 and UniProSM v1.8. At the MWC 2018,

unveiled embedded UFS () v3.0 and uMCP (UFS-based

multi-chip package A multi-chip module (MCM) is generically an electronic assembly (such as a package with a number of conductor terminals or "pins") where multiple integrated circuits (ICs or "chips"), semiconductor dies and/or other discrete components are int ...

) solutions. On 30 January 2020 JEDEC published version 3.1 of the UFS standard. UFS 3.1 introduces Write Booster, Deep Sleep, Performance Throttling Notification and Host Performance Booster for faster, more power efficient and cheaper UFS solutions. The Host Performance Booster feature is optional. In 2022 Samsung announced version 4.0 doubling from 11.6 Gbit/s to 23.2 Gbit/s with the use of MIPI M-PHY v5.0 and UniPro v2.0.

Notable devices

In February 2013, semiconductor company Toshiba Memory (now

Kioxia Kioxia Holdings Corporation (), simply known as Kioxia and stylized as KIOXIA, is an American-Japanese multinational computer memory manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate as in June ...

) started shipping samples of a 64GB

chip, the first chip to support the then new UFS standard. In April 2015, Samsung's Galaxy S6 family was the first phone to ship with storage using the UFS 2.0 standard. On 7 July 2016, Samsung announced its first UFS cards, in 32, 64, 128, and 256 GB storage capacities. The cards were based on the UFS 1.0 Card Extension Standard. The 256GB version was reported to offer sequential read performance up to 530 MB/s and sequential write performance up to 170 MB/s and random performance of 40,000 read IOPS and 35,000 write IOPS. However, they were apparently not actually released to the public. On 17 November 2016,

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

announced the

Snapdragon 835 This is a list of Qualcomm Snapdragon systems on chips (SoC) made by Qualcomm for use in smartphones, tablets, laptops, 2-in-1 PCs, smartwatches, and smartbooks devices. Before Snapdragon SoC made by Qualcomm before it was renamed to Snapdr ...

SoC with support for UFS 2.1. On 14 May 2019, OnePlus introduced the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro, the first phones to feature built-in 3.0 (The Galaxy Fold, originally planned to be the first smartphone to feature UFS 3.0 was ultimately delayed after the OnePlus 7's launch). The first UFS cards began to be publicly sold in early 2020. According to a Universal Flash Storage Association press release, Samsung planned to transition its products to UFS cards during 2020. Several consumer devices with UFS card slots have been released in 2020.

Version comparison

UFS

UFS Card

Implementation

* UFS 2.0 has been implemented in Snapdragon 820 and 821. Kirin 950 and 955. Exynos 7420. * UFS 2.1 has been implemented in Snapdragon 712 (710&720G), 730G, 732G, 835, 845 and 855. Kirin 960, 970 and 980. Exynos 9609, 9610, 9611, 9810 and 980. * UFS 3.0 has been implemented in Snapdragon 855, 855+, 860, 865, Exynos 9820–9825, and Kirin 990. * UFS 3.1 has been implemented in Snapdragon 855+/860, Snapdragon 865, Snapdragon 870, Snapdragon 888, Exynos 2100, and Exynos 2200. * UFS 4.0 has been implemented in MediaTek Dimensity 9200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Complementary UFS standards

On 30 March 2016, JEDEC published version 1.0 of the UFS Card Extension Standard (JESD220-2), which offered many of the features and much of the same functionality as the existing UFS 2.0 embedded device standard, but with additions and modifications for removable cards. Also in March 2016, JEDEC published version 1.1 of the UFS Unified Memory Extension (JESD220-1A), version 2.1 of the UFS Host Controller Interface (UFSHCI) standard (JESD223C), and version 1.1A of the UFSHCI Unified Memory Extension standard (JESD223-1A). On January 30, 2018, the UFS Card Extension standard was updated to version 1.1 (JESD220-2A), and the UFSHCI standard was updated to version 3.0 (JESD223D), to align with UFS version 3.0.

Rewrite cycle life

A UFS drive's rewrite life cycle affects its lifespan. There is a limit to how many write/erase cycles a flash block can accept before it produces errors or fails altogether. Each write/erase cycle causes a flash memory cell's oxide layer to deteriorate. The reliability of a drive is based on three factors: the age of the drive, total terabytes written over time and drive writes per day. This is typical of flash memory in general.

References

External links

JEDEC

Universal Flash Storage Association

Current standards
of UFS and UFS Card
Presentation
by Scott Jacobson and Harish Verma at Flash Memory Summit 2013
What is UFS 2.1 smartphone?
{{Memory Cards Solid-state computer storage Computer-related introductions in 2016