UFS 5.0 Memory Announced: Nearly 2X Speed Boost for Smartphone AI
The industry consortium responsible for defining memory standards, JEDEC, announced this Tuesday (7) the Universal Flash Storage 5.0 (UFS 5.0), the fifth generation of flash storage dedicated to low-power devices, including smartphones. Still in the finalization phase, the new standard promises considerable advances over the previous generation by nearly doubling the speed limit, in addition to improving security and applying tweaks to boost the communication signal quality.
Similar to SSDs, UFS storage utilizes NAND memory but is optimized to occupy less space and, most importantly, consume less power, thus targeting smartphones, tablets, handheld consoles (like the Nintendo Switch 2, which uses UFS), wearables, and similar devices. The protocol now reaches its 5th generation with significant advancements, practically doubling the maximum speed even compared to the recent UFS 4.1.
As highlighted by JEDEC, the debuting standard would be capable of reaching 10.8 GB/s of sequential read and write, compared to the 5.8 GB/s of UFS 4.0, in the most common use with two communication lanes. We would also see considerable improvements for each lane, with the transfer rate increasing from 2.9 GB/s to 6.4 GB/s.
UFS 5.0: The Key Upgrades
The secret to the advancements lies in the adjustments made to enhance data signal integrity: in addition to featuring an equalization system, UFS 5.0 adopts a dedicated power supply track, isolated from the communication interface and memory management, which reduces interference.
Another critical point is security, with the adoption of encryption using the inline hashing system. Combined, these advances guarantee greater speed and energy efficiency, and prepare the new storage to “meet the demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI),” which have been intensifying in devices like mobile phones.
Completing the most important aspects is backward compatibility with systems prepared for UFS 4.0 and UFS 4.1. It is likely that, in these cases, there will be no speed benefit, but this feature should facilitate the adoption of the new format, as it would not be necessary to prepare a device from scratch to use it.
The protocol is not yet fully finalized, and therefore, there is no official release deadline. However, Samsung, one of the main memory manufacturers, has already shared a deployment schedule for its UFS-based solutions, indicating that UFS 5.0 should officially debut in 2027.
It is likely that other giants, such as Micron and SK Hynix, will follow a similar timeline, but we should hear more from the companies in the coming days, now that the standard has been announced.
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