Mobile Tech Companies Work On Flash Memory Standard

Once the standard is finalized in 2009, users will be able to get a removable memory card that can be shared among mobile phones, digital cameras, and other electronic devices without adaptors.

Several mobile phone technology companies began a collaborative effort this week to create a flash memory standard for mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices.

Micron Technology, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, Spansion, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments said they will support the development of an industry specification called Universal Flash Storage (UFS) for removable memory cards and embedded memory technologies.

The standard, which will eliminate the need for adaptors to accommodate various removable memory card sizes, is being developed by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, an organization that creates open standards in the semiconductor industry.

Once UFS is finalized in 2009, users will be able to get a unified removable memory card that can be shared among mobile phones, digital cameras, and other electronic devices without adaptors.

"The proposed UFS specification is good news to card manufacturers and set designers alike. The proliferating use of flash memory as a storage medium underscores the importance of introducing a universal connectivity to memory cards where high performance and reliability are critical," said Jon Kang, Samsung's president, in a statement.

The growing popularity of multimedia content and the demand for higher performance devices that can handle such content have created the need for flash memory storage, such as removable cards, and embedded formats.

UFS promises to offer high-speed access to large multimedia files, while consuming less power in consumer electronic devices. UFS's performance is expected to be much higher than is offered today by flash cards. For example, with the new standard, instead of experiencing a three-minute access time for a 90-minute, 4 Gigabyte high-definition movie, users would only wait a few seconds.