DRAMeXchange: Introduction to UFS transfer interface and applications

DRAMeXchange: Introduction to UFS transfer interface and applications

Nov. 4th, 2010--Recently some members in JEDEC task group such as Samsung, Nokia, Micron, Qualcomm, Intel, Toshiba, SanDisk, TI and STMicro etc. are aggressively promoting on new high-performance universal open NAND Flash transfer interface standard-- ” UFS” (Universal Flash Storage). The spec. construction at the purpose of more convenient for NAND Flash applied on 3C (consumer electronics, communication and computer) end products so that NAND Flash can be more wildly applied on memory card, PMP, embedded storage and SSD etc. in the near future. 

With the continuous improvement for broad-bandwidth wireless Internet & communication technologies and high-definition & 3D multimedia contents, the demand for high-speed data transmission are majorly surged for NB PC, Net PC, smart phone, tablet PC & emerging smart mobile devices etc. Therefore, current some NAND Flash transfer interfaces may be somewhat unsatisfied with the data transfer efficiency required by smart mobile devices under the ever-evolving high-speed Internet & communication environments. UFS 1.0 transfer speed thus is scheduled to be enhanced to 300MB/Sec while UFS 2.0 will be upgraded to 600MB/Sec to cope with the better performance required by NAND Flash end products for high-speed high-resolution high-capacity data transfer applications. 

Analyzed from current NAND Flash application interfaces, SD standard is the mainstream interface for memory card applications, SATA standard for SSD interface applications and eMMC standard for smart phone embedded storage interface applications. However, we believe these NAND Flash related standard organizations will continuously develop new standard & spec. for further performance improvement to meet with the requirement for new high-speed high-capacity data transfer application trend. We thus don’t expect UFS to significantly change the ecosystem status of NAND Flash transfer interface applications in the short term. Currently we regard UFS as the flexible alternative among diversified NAND Flash interface applications. We also expect the current mainstream NAND Flash transfer interfaces to still co-exist and be popularly adopted by 3C product makers in the mid-term. 

According to the current roadmap plan of JEDEC, we will primarily consider UFS as the new NAND Flash transfer interface to mainly first support the post-eMMC 4.5 applications in emerging smart mobile devices such as smart phone and tablet PC etc. JEDEC is scheduled to finalize the UFS 1.0 spec. in 1H11 while it is expected to be designed and adopted into new end-product applications in 2012. That is, we expect UFS to be likely significantly implemented on some 3.5-4G wireless communication technology-based smart mobile devices in 2013 and help boost the UFS penetration rate. Since current eMMC 4.4 will be migrated to eMMC 4.5 in 2011, we expect eMMC to remain its mainstream status among 2-3G wireless communication technology-based smart mobile devices in the mid-term.