Catching up on UFS 4.0? The time has not yet come

In February 2011, the UFS 1.0 version was born, but it was not good enough and the eMMC flash memory was gaining momentum, so it quickly disappeared. It wasn't until two and a half years later (September 2013) that version 2.0 of UFS was born that the flash memory standard came into view.

Eleven years later, Samsung's UFS 4.0 flash memory is finally here. UFS 3.0/3.1 has become the standard for flagships today, how many surprises can this upcoming UFS 4.0 bring?

UFS 4.0, just a word away

UFS 2.0 is not fast, so in addition to the single-channel version, a dual-channel version has been added, and the sequential read and write speed has been greatly improved, and the random read and write speed has also been improved by a certain extent. Starting with version 3.0, UFS Flash comes standard with dual channels.

The sequential read and write speed of UFS 3.0 is almost double that of UFS 2.0, of which the sequential read speed is as high as 1500MB/s, and the random read and write speeds are similar. With each generation of upgrades, the read and write speed of flash memory will increase dramatically.

Data revealed by Samsung shows that UFS 4.0 sequential read speed is up to 4200MB/s, and sequential write speed can reach 2800MB/s. Compared with the fastest UFS 3.1, UFS 4.0 reads and writes have also increased by more than 60%. Samsung said that UFS 4.0 supports 23.2Gbps per channel, which is 2 times that of UFS 3.1, and is ideal for 5G smartphones that need to process a lot of data.

This year, the game phone launched by Brands such as Black Shark and Savior actually used the SSD hard disk in order to improve the game installation and loading speed, which is undoubtedly smashing the field of UFS. Now that UFS 4.0 is here, it is expected to pull back the scene and tell everyone who is the king of mobile phone flash memory.

Do mobile phones really need high-speed flash memory?

To digress, many people will confuse flash memory with memory, and even some mobile phone offline stores will play the slogan of "256GB" large memory. Memory is "main memory", direct interaction with the CPU, used to run programs, memory speed is extremely fast, but power failure will lose data, and the cost is extremely high.

The nature of flash memory is similar to that of hard disks and USB sticks, and is mainly used to store data. With the updating and iteration of flash memory technology, the virtual memory technology already owned by the original version of Android has become a key feature of many mobile phone manufacturers today. Using a part of the flash memory as memory, it is true that you can open several more apps in the background, but the speed can be imagined, and it cannot be compared with the real memory.

Flash, or is it suitable for their own working storage, so the question is, who exactly needs high-speed flash memory the most? Flash memory is used to store data, so the first thing to mention is naturally people who often transfer large amounts of data, and the faster the flash memory, the more efficient they will be in transferring data. However, now the network disk is popular, especially under the supervision of the relevant departments, many network disk companies have reduced fees and accelerated, and have also launched some free network disk tools.

Once Many of Xiao Lei's classmates and colleagues will carry U disks and mobile hard disks, and now they are troublesome and unwilling to bring these things, not as convenient as the network disk, open a member, even if it is a high-definition movie, can also be played directly online.

Second, many people who regularly download, install apps, and play games often will also need high-speed flash memory. Install a 2GB size App, UFS 2.1 flash memory may take 20 to 30 seconds, UFS 3.0 only takes about 10 to 15 seconds, although the gap is only a dozen seconds, but the user's feeling is completely different.

When we play some games to enter the interface, we also need to load the scene of the game, the faster the flash memory, the faster the loading speed chance. Therefore, when playing Chicken and King, I found that the loading was too slow, which may not be a network problem, but that the flash memory of your own or teammate's mobile phone is too poor and needs to be loaded for a longer time.

In addition, after zhongguancun actual measurement, an Android flagship equipped with UFS 3.0 opened 500 apps in turn, taking 38 minutes and 47 seconds, and the Android flagship equipped with UFS 2.1 took 1 hour, 2 minutes and 24 seconds, and the gap can be imagined.

For most people, flash speed is not just needed, eMMC flash speed lags behind, but there are still many user groups. But in the face of UFS 4.0, which can improve the user experience, who will directly refuse?

UFS 4.0, when will it become widespread?

Now many thousand-yuan machines can even carry UFS 3.1 flash memory, which is good news for nearly 1 billion domestic smartphone users. So when will UFS 4.0 be popularized?

The biggest obstacle to the popularity of UFS 4.0 is certainly the cost. When UFS 3.0 was born, only the flagship machine was willing to carry it, because the cost was significantly higher than that of UFS 2.0/2.1, and the situation faced by UFS 4.0 was the same, and the initial probability was that only the flagship would have the opportunity to choose it. The problem is that the iPhone has NVMe flash memory options that are not inferior to UFS 4.0, and the sales of Android flagships are only how much.

If it is put in previous years, there is also a Huawei can grab the market with Apple, Huawei's current situation we all know, only a few models are released every year, and the production capacity has been restricted. The most regrettable thing is that the high-end market vacated by Huawei is almost all cheaper than Apple.

Counterpoint data shows that Apple's share of the high-end mobile phone market rose to 63.5% in 2021, an increase of 8.1%, while Android's share fell to 36.5%. The share of high-end Android mobile phones is getting lower and lower, which is bound to affect the initial sales of UFS 4.0, flash memory manufacturers want to quickly recover costs, and may even need to continue to invest in research and development funds, strive for more mature technical processes, reduce production costs, and the contradiction has arisen.

This configuration will only be fully ubiquitous until flash memory vendors develop more advanced and mature processes to achieve cost reductions for UFS 4.0. If the contradiction between cost and price cannot be resolved, the pace of UFS 4.0 adoption will slow down significantly.

Fortunately, UFS 4.0 is not only used on mobile phones, Samsung's targets are cars, VR, AR and so on. Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president of operations, has said that the car is the ultimate mobile device. From the development of the automotive industry in the past two years, we can also see that intelligence is the general trend, more and more software is on the car machine system, and more and more enterprises are investing in the research and development army of the car machine system, such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu and so on.

UFS 4.0's read and write speed has caught up with some of the hard disks used for PCs, and also has the advantages of low power consumption and small size, although the cost will be higher, but for cars that cost more than 100,000 yuan, this cost is not nothing.

Most people may not have been exposed to VR equipment, but the VR industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and domestic mobile phone manufacturers Huawei and OPPO have launched VR glasses. In the future, the function of VR equipment will increase, the demand for storage space will also become higher, coupled with the need to take into account the weight, volume, power consumption requirements, then naturally need high-speed UFS 4.0 to meet the needs of users.

Compared with VR, AR is more cold, low sales are terrible, this is no way, because AR equipment is too expensive, any normal POINT OF AR equipment, the price is about 4,000 yuan.

Smart cars, VR, AR are all developing, although sales are not too high now, and not all products will choose UFS 4.0, but the combined number is very impressive. With the help of these three industries, the speed of cost recovery for flash memory manufacturers, the maturity of the UFS 4.0 process, and the speed of popularization will inevitably accelerate.

In the third quarter of this year, Samsung UFS 4.0 flash memory will be put into production, and it is expected that the Android flagship early next year will basically be equipped with UFS 4.0. Since the flagship machine uses UFS 4.0, it is believed that more and more low-end models will abandon UFS 2.2 and use UFS 3.1 instead, and consumers will be able to buy higher-equipped smartphones at a lower price.

As for when the thousand yuan machine can be used on UFS 4.0, from the popularity of UFS 3.0/3.1, Xiao Lei believes that it will take about four years. At that time, UFS 5.0 is also coming.

However, we don't have to expect UFS 4.0, which is already fast and usually takes only a few seconds to install software. Not to mention the initial UFS 4.0 mobile phone, the price may be high, cheap and affordable mobile phone, is obviously a better choice.