Toshiba announces UFS 2.1 mobile storage chips with up to 900 MB/s sequential read speeds

Even though smartphones with more than 128 GB internal storage chips cost a small fortune these days, the actual reading and writing speeds are still subpar when compared to SSD solutions. Soon enough, though, the mobile storage chips will surpass the SATA SSDs when it comes to sequential reading speeds and even get close to what PCIe NVMe SSDs offer, as Toshiba is already sampling its new 64-layer BICS 3D TLC NAND memory specifically designed for mobile devices. The high performance is enabled with the addition of UFS (Universal Flash Storage) 2.1 specifications, and Toshiba wants to target demanding mobile applications running on smartphones, tablets and VR headsets.

The new memory chips will be available in 32, 64, 128 and 256 GB capacities, with a 11.5 x 13 mm package that uses two full-duplex HS-Gear3 lanes for up to 5.8 Gb/s data transfer rates per lane. These specs yield sequential reading speeds up to 900 MB/s and sequential writing speeds up to 180 MB/s for the 64 GB chip, also improving the random read/write performance. The 32 GB version will be slower due to lower parallelism, while the higher capacity versions will end up faster.

Toshiba did not mention when it would ship the new chips to OEMs, but devices with this type of UFS 2.1 storage are expected to hit the market some time in 2018.

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