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.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday July 08 2016, @08:10AM
Note that the UFS standard includes an 'RPMB' security function, as documented here:
http://universalflash.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/1306_UFSA_White_Paper.pdf [universalflash.org]
What is RPMB?
Well, if you look at this presentation (page 13) http://zedboard.org/sites/default/files/documentations/EBU%20eMMC%20Security%20rev1.1%20-%20Non%20Confidential.pdf [zedboard.org]
You will see that it is "Replay Protected Memory Block" - an area not accessible via standard Block IO, but by a special command set. It's an area where, for example, DRM keys could be written at card manufacture. So this eMMC standard is re-used in the UFS standard.
More details on its use at Phoronix, here: http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Patches-RPMB [phoronix.com]
I must admit, I do not know the security implications here, if there are any, for general use of UFS. As far as I know (which is not very far), one of the benefits of UFS is that the standard does not mandate the use of the Microsoft proprietary filesystem, exFAT, unlike SDHC cards. I have not downloaded the UFS standards (available here,'free' download, registration required: https://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/focus/flash/universal-flash-storage-ufs [jedec.org] ) to check - call me lazy if you like.
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2520/~/sd%2Fsdhc%2Fsdxc-specifications-and-compatibility [sandisk.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday July 08 2016, @09:23AM
Just an observation - the link that you have provided to the JEDEC UFS specifications is the very same one that is already in TFS.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday July 08 2016, @12:22PM
Just an observation - the link that you have provided to the JEDEC UFS specifications is the very same one that is already in TFS.
This is good - it means I'm consistent with the submission. :-)