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posted by janrinok on Friday July 08 2016, @02:10AM   Printer-friendly

Gizmag reports that Samsung is expected to be the first company to offer for sale a new type of memory card, Universal Flash Storage. The new cards, which follow a JEDEC standard, have the same size and shape as microSD cards but are electrically incompatible with them.

Samsung claims a "sequential read speed of 530 megabytes per second (MB/s)" and, for the 256 GB card (the largest capacity), a "170 MB/s sequential write speed" and "35,000 random IOPS." Gizmag likened the speeds to those obtainable with SSDs. Cards with capacities as small as 32 GB will be offered.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday July 08 2016, @02:48AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Friday July 08 2016, @02:48AM (#371608)

    "Universal Flash Storage"

    "have the same size and shape as microSD cards but are electrically incompatible with them"

    1. How can it be "universal" if it isn't compatible?

    2. They made it fit but not work. Kill them. Kill them now. Kill them very much.

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  • (Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday July 08 2016, @02:51AM

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Friday July 08 2016, @02:51AM (#371611)

    sounds like a millennial was in charge of this one.

    oh boy....

    hope it does not fit in the same slot, but it seems it might (?). I'm tired of such shitty standards.

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday July 08 2016, @03:05AM

      by butthurt (6141) on Friday July 08 2016, @03:05AM (#371617) Journal

      As I understand it, UFS cards will indeed fit in a microSD slot and will not work with devices designed only for microSD. Upcoming hardware will have a single slot in which both types of cards will work. Isn't that preferable to needing distinct slots? I would assume the pin-out was changed for reasons, but I don't know what they might be.

      Wikipedia has a page (begun in 2007!) about the standard:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Flash_Storage [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @04:05AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @04:05AM (#371636)

        As I understand it, UFS cards will indeed fit in a microSD slot and will not work with devices designed only for microSD. Upcoming hardware will have a single slot in which both types of cards will work. Isn't that preferable to needing distinct slots?

        Yes, it is, but the normal solution is to add a tab to the new flavor that stops it fitting in the old slots, but the new slots, with a cutout for that tab, will accept both flavors. Then you don't need distinct slots, but without creating the "fits, but doesn't work" problem.

        That said, it appears from the pictures in TFA as though they actually did it right, and TFS has oversimplified it. The shape pictured is not the same as microSD -- not worth describing textually, just RTFA and you'll see. I assume this shape change is precisely to prevent putting a UFS card in a microSD slot.

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday July 08 2016, @06:11AM

          by butthurt (6141) on Friday July 08 2016, @06:11AM (#371680) Journal

          > TFS has oversimplified it.

          That was my doing. The article said the UFS cards are "the same size" as microSD and I added "and shape." Thank you for the correction.

      • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday July 08 2016, @05:00PM

        by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Friday July 08 2016, @05:00PM (#371905) Journal

        Isn't that preferable to needing distinct slots?

        In a perfect world, yes.

        Unfortunately, in this world, the answer is no, because as soon as these become popular, everybody who's “that so smrt computer dork” will get bombarded with questions about why their laptop at home can't read their thumb drive even though it worked just fine in the office.

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday July 08 2016, @09:30PM

          by butthurt (6141) on Friday July 08 2016, @09:30PM (#372065) Journal

          Another poster corrected me, saying that there's a tab that will prevent UFS cards from going into a slot meant only for microSD.

  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday July 08 2016, @03:03AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday July 08 2016, @03:03AM (#371615)

    I guess the idea is the new slot will also accept microSD cards but really, to call it "Universal" and not give it both sets of interfaces so it can go into anything is just daft. Calling the slots "Universal" if they take either type would be ok though, but the article linked doesn't even bother to mention a single device that is equipped for these new products. Of course they didn't announce actual AVAILABILITY of the new cards either which makes sense if there aren't any places to stick them yet. Will it actually ship? Will it be vaporware? Will it get redesigned to be backward compatible before it ships? Who knows, stay tuned because they will almost certainly have more press releases before anything happens for real.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 08 2016, @06:20AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday July 08 2016, @06:20AM (#371686) Homepage
    > They made it fit but not work.

    What could possibly go wrong? I hope that either putting old card in new socket or new card in old socket causes at least one side of the connection to get fried, that way a nice juicy class action will ensue!

    (Disclaimer: once worked for Samsung, parted on less than perfect terms, but I would have made this post no matter what company it was.)
    --
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