Nokia said it and several other industry heavyweights support the creation of a common flash storage technology that removes the need for adaptors to accommodate different removable memory card sizes.
Nokia said Micron, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Spansion, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments all support the new specification, dubbed Universal Flash Storage, or UFS.
The new specification reflects the industry's need for a universal memory solution. Widespread demand for higher densities and higher performance, plus the popularity of multimedia content, is accelerating the need for advanced memory solutions in removable card formats. UFS will support very low access times required for memories, as well as high-speed access to large multimedia files, while reducing power-consumption. The target performance level is expected to be a significant advancement beyond that of the varied flash cards popular today. Today, users experience a three-minute access time for a 90-minute (4 Gigabyte) high-definition movie; with the new standard, this would be reduced to a few seconds.
UFS is expected to give consumers the convenience of a unified removable memory card that can be shared among various mobile, portable and other consumer electronic devices without the need for any adaptors. The UFS standard is expected to be finalized in 2009.
