Micron Technology, Inc., Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, Spansion Inc., STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments have announced their support for the creation of a new industry specification for removable memory cards and embedded memory solutions being standardized by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC).

According to these companies, this new specification, dubbed Universal Flash Storage (UFS), reflects the industry's need for a universal memory solution that removes the need for adaptors to accommodate different removable memory card sizes.

Widespread demand for higher densities and higher performance, plus the surging popularity of multimedia content, is accelerating the need for advanced memory solutions as removable card or embedded formats. UFS will provide a leap towards supporting very low access times required for memories, as well as enabling high-speed access to large multimedia files, while reducing power-consumption in consumer electronic (CE) devices.

The target performance level is expected to be a significant advancement beyond that of the varied flash cards popular today. Today, users experience a three-minute access time for a 90-minute (4 Gigabyte) high-definition movie; with the new standard, this would be reduced to a few seconds.

Major applications such as mobile handsets, digital still cameras and other CE devices will benefit from the convenience of a universal open standard based specification that is intended to reduce the time-consuming process of enabling interoperability among the various types of removable and embedded memory solutions at the system level.

UFS is planned to provide consumers in the future with the convenience of a unified removable memory card that can be shared among various mobile, portable and other CE devices without the need for any adaptors.

The UFS standard is expected to be finalized in 2009.