KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of its newest generation of 256 and 512 gigabyte (GB) Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 embedded flash memory devices. Housed in 0.8 and 1.0 mm-high packages, the new products improve performance by 30% for random read and 40% for random write - making them thinner and faster than their predecessors. The new KIOXIA UFS devices utilize the company's most current, high-performance BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and are targeted to a variety of mobile applications.

The broad set of power and space conscious applications that utilize embedded flash memory continue to need higher performance and density, and UFS has increasingly been the solution of choice. From a total GB perspective, UFS now accounts for the majority of the demand relative to e-MMC. According to Forward Insights, when combining overall UFS and e-MMC GB demand worldwide, almost 70% of the demand this year is for UFS, and this will continue to grow."Our latest UFS devices further push the boundaries of performance with features such as Host Performance Booster, and are delivered in the thin package solutions demanded by leading-edge smartphones and other applications," noted Scott Beekman, senior director of managed flash memory products for KIOXIA America, Inc. "We are pleased to continue to demonstrate our leadership in UFS by providing flash memory solutions that enhance the capabilities of the many applications that use UFS."

The new UFS 256 GB and 512 GB devices include the following advances:

• Performance increase of 30% for random read and 40% for random write.
• Host Performance Booster (HPB) Ver. 2.0: Improves random read performance by utilizing the host side memory to store logical to physical translation tables. While HPB Ver. 1.0 only enables 4 kilobyte chunk size access, HPB Ver. 2.0 enables wider access - which can further boost random read performance.
• Thinner 256 GB package at just 0.8 mm height.