XFMExpress is another of the new generation standards approved by the JEDEC organization. If the UFS 4 that we reviewed yesterday was intended to improve internal storage drives in portable devices, the one at hand is dedicated to removable storage.
Kioxia has announced the first card compatible with this XFMExpress, which as a major novelty uses an interface PCIe 4.0 to increase the level of performance to levels never seen before in these external and removable drives. So much so that, they say, they will be a convincing alternative to SSDs.
Another advantage is the low profile of the form factor. With dimensions of 14mm x 18mm x 1.4mm, optimizes mounting space for ultra-compact host devices without sacrificing performance or serviceability. The minimized height makes them ideal for thinner and lighter notebooks, while the flexibility of removable storage helps reduce technical barriers and design limitations.
All in all, performance is your best cover letter. A memory chip connected to PCIe 4.0 it can achieve a theoretical potential throughput of up to 6,000 Mbytes per second in sequential read/write. They also support the NVMe 1.4b protocol to make the drives bootable.
For all these reasons, these XFMExpress are a compelling alternative to other form factors such as M.2 solid state drives. Kioxia sees a future for them in a wide variety of devices, ultra-mobile PCs, IoT, and a variety of embedded applications.
Kioxia will show its new removable storage at the Flash Memory Summit 2022 to be held from August 2 to 4 in California, with versions of 256 and 512 Gbytes of capacity. It is clear that NAND flash-based solutions are the present and future of storage. The internal one, with novelties such as PCI Gen5 SSDs and also the removable one with what will be arriving under this XFMExpress standard.
