Micron has unveiled its UFS 4.0 storage chip, measuring 9mm by 13 mm, making it the smallest design, from the company so far. Surprisingly, despite its size, the chip maintains sequential read and write performance.
More About the Micron UFS 4.0 Storage Package
This small UFS 4.0 chip was developed in Microns customer labs situated in the United States, China, and Korea utilizing their 232-layer 3D NAND technology. The decision to reduce the chip’s size was influenced by feedback from smartphone makers looking to accommodate batteries in their devices.
Interestingly, Apple is unlikely to be one of these partners as they usually opt for NVMe storage over UFS 4.0 in their products. Micron had previously introduced an 11mm by 13mm package in June and with this version, they have managed to reduce the size by 20 percent. Despite this reduction, the sequential read and write speeds are impressive at 4,300MB/s and 4,000MB/s slightly slower than the NVMe Gen 4 standard without any compromise on performance.
In addition to its size of Microns, the UFS 4.0 storage chip also touts power consumption with claims of up to a 25 percent increase in efficiency. Furthermore, it includes modes to boost efficiency and durability;
- High Performance Mode (HPM): Gives priority, to tasks over background activities leading to a more, than 25% speed boost when using a smartphone intensely like opening multiple apps.
- Single Click Refresh (SCR): Optimizes data automatically to uphold performance providing quicker read/write speeds, swift camera roll access, and smooth multitasking.
- Zoned UFS (ZUFS): Allows the host to specify different zones for data storage, reducing write amplification and extending the smartphone’s lifespan while maintaining peak performance.
Micron plans to offer its latest UFS 4.0 storage chip in capacities of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. Samples are already being shipped to partners, hinting at their imminent integration into upcoming high-end smartphones.
