Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, recently announced that it has begun mass production of the industry’s first Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 4.0 embedded flash memory devices with 4-bit-per-cell, quadruple-level cell (QLC) technology.
According to Industry sources, QLC UFS offers a higher bit density than traditional TLC UFS, making it suitable for mobile applications that need huge storage capacities. Advancements in controller technology and error correction have enabled QLC technology to accomplish this while maintaining competitive performance. Kioxia’s latest 512 Gigabyte (GB) QLC UFS achieves sequential read speeds of up to 4,200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speeds of up to 3,200 MB/s, taking full advantage of the UFS 4.0 interface speed.
Salient Features comprises of:
- Supports High-Speed Link Startup Sequence (HS-LSS) features: With conventional UFS, Link Startup (M-PHY and UniPro initialization sequence) between device and host is performed at low-speed PWM-G1 (3~9 megabits per second4), but with HS-LSS, it can be performed at a faster HS-G1 Rate A (1,248 megabits per second). This is expected to reduce the time for Link Startup by approximately 70% compared to the conventional method.
- Enhances security: By utilizing Advanced RPMB (Replay Protected Memory Block) for improved read and write access to security data, such as user credentials on RPMB area, and RPMB Purge to ensure discarded security data may be sanitized securely and rapidly.
- Supports Extended Initiator ID (Ext-IID): Intended to be used with Multi Circular Queue (MCQ) at the UFS 4.0 host controller for improved random performance.
Industry sources further confirmed that Kioxia’s QLC UFS is well-suited for smartphones and tablets, as well as other next-generation applications where higher storage capacity and performance are vital considerations – including PCs, networking, AR/VR, and AI.
