UFS 5.0 announced with almost twice as fast data speeds!

By
Baman Prasad Guragain
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JEDEC announces UFS 5.0 standard for flash storage
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Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) has announced the UFS 5.0 standard for storage devices. This new generation of UFS 5.0 flash storage brings nearly twice as fast sequential performance compared to UFS 4.0 and UFS 4.1. We expect smartphones with the next-gen UFS storage to arrive pretty soon, so let’s take a closer look at what’s in store here.

A big performance leap with UFS 5.0

So for starters, the UFS 5.0 has a maximum sequential performance of 10.8 GB/s, compared to 5.8 GB/s on UFS 4.0 and UFS 4.1. That’s an increase of over 180%! This makes it fairly competitive against desktop-grade PCIe 5.0 SSDs like the Corsair MP700 Pro with around 12 GB/s of sequential read/write speeds, while maintaining mobile-friendly power efficiency.

UFS 5.0 vs UFS 4.0 comparison
AI generated

But of course, you might not even notice this spec bump because older UFS standards were already plenty fast enough for most stuff. Instead, JEDEC states that the reason for a faster UFS 5.0 storage is to meet the growing demands of various AI applications that we see in modern-day mobile phones. Additionally, it achieves this with low power consumption, making it prominent for applications where power efficiency is essential.

Additional improvements

Apart from the obvious performance changes, the UFS 5.0 also comes with enhanced signal integrity from integrated link equalization. Whereas a distinct power supply rail eases integration for noise isolation between PHY (Physical Layer) and the memory subsystem. It’s also supposed to be more secure with inline hashing.

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When will we see UFS 5.0?

The exact release timeline for this new generation of flash storage has not been confirmed yet. JEDEC says they are finalizing the full specifications of the next-gen UFS standard, so we expect to see smartphones with UFS 5.0 to release shortly.