Samsung has revealed the first removable memory cards based on the JEDEC Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 1.0 Card Extension Standard. Designed for use in high-resolution mobile shooting devices like digital SLRs, 3D virtual reality cameras, action cams and drones, they’ll soon be available in 32, 64, 128 and 256GB versions. The only problem is, they aren’t compatible with anything. Yet.
Image: supplied
Samsung’s new 256GB UFS removable memory card — simply referred to as the UFS card, promises to provide greatly improved user experiences, especially in high-resolution 3D gaming and high-resolution movie playback. It provides more than five times faster sequential read performance compared to that of a typical microSD card, reading sequentially at 530 megabytes per second –which is similar to the sequential read speed of the most widely used SATA SSDs.
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With this UFS card, you can read a 5GB, Full-HD movie in approximately 10 seconds, compared to a typical UHS-1 microSD card, which would take over 50 seconds with 95MB/s of sequential reading speed. Also, at a random read rate of 40,000 IOPS, the 256GB card delivers more than 20 times higher random read performance compared to a typical microSD, which offers approximately 1,800 IOPS.
When it comes to writing, the new 256GB UFS card processes 35,000 random IOPS, which is 350 times higher than the 100 IOPs of a typical microSD card, and attains a 170MB/s sequential write speed, almost doubling the top-end microSD card speed. With these substantial performance improvements, the new 256GB UFS card significantly reduces multimedia data downloading time, photo thumbnail loading time and buffer clearing time in burst shooting mode, which, collectively, can be particularly beneficial to DSLR camera users.
To shoot 24 large/extra fine JPEG photographs (1,120 megabyte (MB)-equivalent) continuously with a high-end DSLR camera, the 256GB UFS card takes less than seven seconds, compared to a UHS-1 microSD card which typically takes about 32 seconds, at 35MB/s.
Aiming for high performing adn power-efficient data transport, the UFS card supports multiple commands with command queuing features and enables simultaneous reading and writing through the use of separately dedicated paths, doubling throughput.
Samsung says it has been aggressive in “preparing UFS solutions for the marketplace” (read: there’s nothing out there right now ytou can use this technology for). Samsung contributed to both the JEDEC standardisation of the Universal Flash Storage 2.0 specification in September 2013 and the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 1.0 Card Extension standard in March 2016.
Following its introduction of the industry-first 128GB embedded UFS chip in January 2015, Samsung launched a 256GB embedded UFS memory for high-end mobile devices in February of this year. As of earlier this month, Samsung also completed the Universal Flash Storage Association (UFSA)’s certification program that evaluates electrical and functional specifications for compatibility of a UFS card, resulting in Samsung’s new UFS card products were approved as UFSA-certified UFS cards with the right to use the official UFS logo for the first time in the industry.
So it may not be too far off before you can take advantage of the new tech.