Samsung has announced a 256 GB MicroSD card using 3D TLC NAND:
Samsung unveiled its beefy EVO Plus 256 GB MicroSD card, which unseats SanDisk as the current MicroSD density leader. SanDisk introduced its 200 GB Ultra MicroSD card in March 2015, but it is widely believed to employ 15nm planar TLC NAND, whereas the new Samsung EVO Plus features its 48-layer 3D TLC V-NAND.
The UHS-1 Class 10 EVO Plus offers up to 95/90 MBps of sequential read/write throughput, which should satisfy the needs of most common applications, such as 4K video recording, high-resolution photography and other mobile applications. In contrast, the SanDisk Ultra 200 GB offers up to 90 MBps of sequential read speed, but no write speed is listed in its specifications.
It's a new dense SD card you can use to fill up your station wagon, but it costs $250 at launch, whereas the price of the SanDisk 200 GB MicroSD card has declined to about $80.
Related: Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording
Related Stories
The SD Association has announced the SD 5.0 standard, which will specify memory cards with write speeds capable of recording 8K and 360°/VR video:
The SD Association, the multi-vendor consortium responsible for developing standards for Secure Digital flash memory cards, has unveiled the newest version of the Secure Digital standard, SD 5.0. The latest iteration of the standard has been released specifically to accomdate video capture, particularly the write speeds needed to record 8K (7680x4320) and 360° videos. To that end, the upcoming SD 5.0 memory cards will introduce the Video Speed Class labeling, as well as a newer protocol that takes into account new NAND flash architectures, enables higher transfer rates and supports multi-file recording.
In order to address the needs for video, the new standard will be tackling both transfer rates and the overall nature of writes with video recordings. The new standard does not introduce a new bus - the current UHS-II bus supports over 150MB/sec in full duplex mode, more than any SD card can currently handle - but rather the focus is on the cards themselves and how they behave.
In particular, the SD 5.0 standard takes into account the fact that recent, high capacity NAND flash chips feature larger block sizes (the smallest area of NAND flash memory that can be erased in a single operation) than previous-gen chips. For example, SK Hynix recently released planar MLC and TLC NAND ICs (integrated circuits) with 6 MB page and 9 MB block sizes, whereas upcoming 3D NAND flash from Intel and Micron will feature 16 MB (MLC) or even 24 MB (TLC) block sizes. Erasing a group of larger blocks takes less time than wiping out a huge number of smaller blocks, which is why larger blocks enable faster write operations, something that is needed to build memory cards for UHD video capture.
The Video Speed Class standard includes a set of 37 block sizes that range from 8 MB to 512 MB, which should be sufficient for the foreseeable future. In addition, the SD 5.0 VSC protocol supports simultaneous interleaving of eight different files, which is useful for 360° videos, multiple independent video streams, or even numerous high-quality still pictures taken at the same time.
The new standard adds new write speed classes of 60 MB/s and 90 MB/s. The fastest former class was UHS Speed Class 3, which specified a minimum of 30 MB/s write speed to allow 4K video recording. The whitepaper lists a 120 FPS frame rate for 8K video recording.
SD Association press release (PDF) and whitepaper (PDF).
SanDisk (Western Digital) has announced a 400 GB MicroSD card for $250:
In 2015, SanDisk released the world's first 200GB microSDXC storage media using TLC flash technology. Today the company announced a successor, the Ultra MicroSDXC UHS-I, which doubles capacity to a massive 400GB housed within a card roughly the size of your finger nail.
This form factor is now the de facto standard for several classes of devices that span a wide range of product types. Most modern cell phones and tablets have standardized on microSD, and the technology has also penetrated other devices, such as drones and game consoles.
This new 400GB model can hold up to 40 hours of Full HD video and has a transfer speed of up to 100 MBps. That comes out to transferring up to 1,200 photos per minute. The card also meets the A1 App Performance Class specification built by the SD Association to ensure high random performance. The specification insists that products carrying the logo can meet or exceed 1,500 random read IOPS and 500 random write IOPS for quick loading of mobile optimized applications.
Time to update your sneakernet bandwidth calculations with this and a 787 Dreamliner.
Also at Engadget, The Verge, and PC Magazine.
Previously: Samsung Announces 256 GB MicroSD Card
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 11 2016, @11:59PM
From-the-it's-getting-bigger dept.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:01AM
ahh... blew it in the rush (that's what SHE said)
From the it's-getting-bigger dept.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:00AM
Rearing up for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording already? That is amazing. I haven't even bothered to upgrade to 4k yet and now I need to get one just to throw it out. Crap the first HDTV I owned is only 3 years old and I just shocked, shocked I say, myself with the fact that my new camcorder can store 6 hours of bluray video on an existing cheap microsd card.
Solid state storage is getting freaking insane. I started with 40 meg MFM hard drives.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:18AM
I use 32 GB SD cards in my DSLR and you have to work to fill that up, even shooting RAW indiscriminately. It would be nice to see them boosting the read/write speed as well, although I have to wonder if current camera hardware can handle more.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:31AM
Without a doubt, there are a bunch of new phones/cameras capable of 4K, 6K, 360/VR recording (I'm not really sure about 8K on the market). The speed classes have been boosted for this purpose, as you can see from the summary or the linked related article.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:07PM
The UHS-1 Class 10 EVO Plus offers up to 95/90 MBps of sequential read/write throughput
My current SD cards have 90 MBps read/write speed but I occasionally see the camera struggling to keep up saving the images before I shoot the next one (to be fair, that may have something to do with battery levels at the time as well). Ditto with the 4k video, although I don't use that nearly as much. New DSLR's are out now with 50+ MP resolution which means even bigger files to save. I am sure the MP race is far from over, at some point the read/write speed will have to get even faster as well.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:07PM
Well I believe the structure of 3d tlc nand could make it easier to hit SSD like speeds.
If you read the related article you'll see that the new write classes don't exceed 90 MBps. That's way more than enough for compressed 4k but I'm not sure about uncompressed. I posit to you that your speed troubles might be due to the camera processor compressing rapidfire RAW images or 4k video, but I'm not sure at all.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:09AM
Wouldn't mind scoring one for my MBP. Anyone have any idea what kind of compatibility existing devices have for these? Most devices I've seen say something along the lines of "...up to 128GB", but at the time the largest cards WERE 128GB, so I don't know if that's a hard limit or marketing shortsightedness.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @01:17AM
I've seen some devices and phones specifically mention support for up to 2 TB, which is still the size limit for all forms of SD card as far as I can tell. I discussed this in one of my journals [soylentnews.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by danomac on Thursday May 12 2016, @01:34AM
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:31AM
Thanks for that. Checking up on the MBP specifically, it looks like it claims "up to 2 TB" as well. I think the thing I was thinking of was the fancy low profile passive adapter I got claiming "up to 128 gb". I guess it should still work in theory, being only passive.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Pino P on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:09AM
Too bad all SD host devices capable of using cards bigger than 32 GB are required to use the exFAT file system, for which Microsoft charges a royalty. I don't expect free operating systems to support it (at least legally in SN's home country).
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:58AM
No possibility to have ExFAT as the default and support other formats as per licensing rules?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:27PM
Not on a device running a completely free operating system. Because exFAT is not available under a free software license, the publisher of a free operating system would not be able to license exFAT.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:04PM
I meant for something like a commercial camera producer. They can have ExFAT as the default filesystem and something like UFS as another option.
Or one could just write one. What's needed is:
* Long filenames
* Bitmap of used sectors or chunks
* Stateless operation tolerant for disruption or some simple log system.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:15PM
No, they can't.
Technically, they could just use one of many existing filesystems. ext4 would probably work just fine, and there's a bunch of flash-oriented filesystems like jfffs2 which are all Free.
The problem is that your customers wouldn't be able to use it. Sure, if the end user runs Ubuntu or Fedora or Arch, then they can just plug in the SD card and it'll "just work". But 90+% of users are running Windows, and that absolutely will not recognize a non-MS filesystem. No one is going to ignore such a large market. Honestly, this seems like a pretty good case for an anti-trust trial: using market dominance to force others to pay royalties is blatantly illegal tying and leverage for a monopolist.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @09:04PM
Seems it's that time again for some M$ antitrust slamming. Another option is to offer plain FAT32 as an "alternative" for backwards compatibility.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday May 13 2016, @08:30AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 13 2016, @09:46PM
The problem is that one of the biggest reasons to use these devices is to transport data between devices. To do that, all the devices have to be able to use whatever filesystem you format it with. That's why exFAT was chosen, since most computers run Windows and Windows doesn't support anything else (except FAT32 and below, which are problematic with these capacities).
There's nothing stopping you from buying some 32GB microSD card now and reformatting it with ext4 or whatever you want. But good luck getting your digital camera, for instance, to read it. On your computer, it's not a problem since you can use whatever OS you want on there (or you can even install an ext4 driver for Windows). But on a device like a camera, or your car stereo, you don't have that ability; you're stuck with whatever the manufacturer chose to implement. Since non-MS OSes have such a small marketshare, the device makers just use *FAT* for compatibility. Macs also have this problem, but here surely Apple just licenses exFAT from MS so they can provide a driver for it, but Linux is Free (and freely distributed) so that's not possible since there's no way to have a per-computer paid license for exFAT in an ISO that's passed around the internet for free.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday May 16 2016, @09:04AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 16 2016, @03:51PM
Yeah, that seems like a screw-up by whoever controls the SD standard. Though I'm not sure what else they could have done, since their whole goal is interoperability and MS is a bad actor. Selling an unformatted card would lead to people buying them, putting them in their cameras (or other small devices), and then being pissed when it doesn't work because it's not formatted, and returning them. Or you could have the device format it, but now you're stuck with a 32GB limit for FAT32, or if you format it to something else it won't work with Windows.
It'd be nice if we had a government which could break up MS for monopolistic abuses like this and then allow consortiums like whoever controls the SD standard, the ISO, etc. to choose standards based purely on technical merit instead of trying to interoperate with a monopolist's product (and thus requiring patent fees). It'd also be nice if we had patent reform, giving us a patent office taking a very dim view of software patents, and especially trivial ones like this.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Sunday May 15 2016, @05:06AM
Why not use FAT32? FAT32 supports up to 2TB and just about anything can read and write to it. Modern Windows won't let you create partitions larger than 32 GB, because Microsoft wants you to use their propriety file systems, but if you create one using another tool* Windows will read/write to it.
*Or a late 90's version of Windows.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 16 2016, @03:45PM
With the way that Windows handles updates (like forcing you to "upgrade" to Windows 10), you can't count on that behavior remaining constant. MS could fix that bug at any time, and then the device makers will have customers screaming at them, bad reviews saying that SD cards formatted with them don't work with Windows, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:52AM
So mkfs.ext4 does nothing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:43AM
Correct. You see, the block level device, although capable of storing EXT4 or other file systems, is legally locked to the ExFAT system by click-wrapped legalese. The lawyers made sure the EULA is bullet proof, so there's no way you can use a FLOSS file system.
Sure, maybe it's technically possible, but.... You really think people would do that? Just install whatever they want and ignore EULAs?
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:34AM
... oops, I knew I should have read that thing.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:34PM
It does something. But if a device requires the user to mkfs.ext4 before using a card, this does not support interchange of files with other conforming SDXC devices, as other devices may not be able to understand the Ext4 file system. Such a device thus does not conform to the spec and thus does not qualify for the SDXC logo.
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:24AM
My nVidia Shield doesn't support exFAT, but the 64 gig microSD in it works just fine.
I had to format it to FAT32, but that's not difficult.
ExFAT is a better file system for large disks than FAT32, but FAT32 still works.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:31PM
Perhaps your SHIELD device is certified only for SDHC (32 GB cards), but larger cards just happen to work if formatted with a nonstandard* file system, nudge nudge. It's not like the transition from classic SD to SDHC, where part of the protocol actually had to change from byte addresses to sector addresses. The transition from SDHC to SDXC was just a file system change.
* FAT32 and Ext[234] are considered nonstandard on SD cards larger than 32 GB.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:41AM
The biggest disk in the array of computers in my house is 1TB 3.5" disk. This thing, about the size of sim card, holds quarter of that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:38AM
MicroSD: [wikipedia.org] 15.0×11.0×1.0 mm
3.5" HDD: [wikipedia.org] 146×101.6×19 or 25.4 mm
Roughly 437 to 585 TB could fit into a 3.5" enclosure. This is with current NAND. There is no doubt that 3D NAND technology can scale some more.
One way or another, SSDs will reach petabyte level storage within the 3.5" and 2.5" form factors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:39AM
At some point we have to stop and ask ourselves, "We can do this, but ... should we do this?"
And the answer is a firm and resounding, "yes"
I know where I work a petabyte of storage is really a drop in the bucket for the ocean, biological, video, imagery, satellite, LIDAR, etc. data we have on hand, but for home use?
I just can't even fathom how much porn I'd need to download to full that sucker up.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:31PM
360 degree stitched together 8K cams bro. You can have your back turned the whole time!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 13 2016, @02:36AM
>You can have your back turned the whole time!
That explains the subject line.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday May 13 2016, @08:35AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 13 2016, @08:49AM
NAND density will at least quadruple in the next 3 years or so.
https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/micron-and-intel-unveil-new-3d-nand-flash-memory/ [intel.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:15AM
In 2013 I wrote this post http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/09/never-underestimate-the-bandwidth-of-a-station-wagon-filled-with-backup-tapes/ [tidbitsfortechs.com] which talked about filling up a Suburban (the modern Station Wagon) with 64GB micro SD cards. Now, multiply 4 times! I really should revisit that with the 256gb cards just for fun. (Hint: Axles disintigrate)
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:34AM
I'm just impressed with the calculation I did above. There doesn't seem to be much of a barrier preventing the creation of a 0.5 petabyte SSD. Now granted, 3.5" SSDs are rare and any SSD is going to waste some space with a controller, power, DRAM cache, etc. There might need to be TSV or a weirder approach to cram as many NAND chips into the space as possible. However, Samsung's 3rd generation 48-layer V-NAND is not the end. They can still increase the number of layers and decrease the cell size. The endurance will remain high as long as they can over-provision it with extra layers while still remaining cost effective.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:48PM
But the dirty little secret of NAND is that as they add more cells? They fail quicker. This is why SLC drives are so expensive yet still sold as enterprise drives, because the reliability of NAND goes down so much with each layer they add to the cells.
This is why I say HDDs aren't going anywhere because for things like backups? They are just more reliable. At the shop I recently did a spring cleaning on my HDD drawer and there was a pile of 20Gb-80Gb drives, now none of these had been plugged in for years, wanna guess how many still worked after sitting gathering dust for God knows how long? ALL OF THEM, just for shits and giggles I threw the 20Gb in a box and set it to boot and was "treated" to the WinME desktop.
With NAND maybe its just a run of bad luck but every time I come across some 128Mb-1Gb flash card or stick and plug it in? Nothing but corrupt files.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:59PM
TLC 3D NAND reliability is WAY up, since the cell size has been boosted back to 30-40nm levels.
Now those cell sizes are going to creep back down to 15nm eventually. But when that happens, extra layers can be added and the excess capacity can be used for over provisioning and wear leveling. Imagine today's 15nm SLC, with capacity multiplied by 3 to account for TLC, multiplied by a number of layers far greater than 48 (to stay conservative, let's say 96-128). That's huge! Plenty of the capacity can be devoted to accounting for the lower endurance.
A real question I have is how many layers can we expect Samsung, Micron, Intel, et al. to reach? They have demonstrated 24 to 48 layers. 64 to 96 layers seems likely. Will it be able to reach 4,096 layers or greater while remaining economical? Maybe, maybe not.
If you have kept up with NAND science, you have probably seen articles claiming that endurance can be made nearly infinite, for example with a heating/HAMR-like technique or different materials. This is a long shot but it's something to look for in the future, and the NAND industry has bought several extra years to work on this with the introduction of 3D NAND.
There is also the possibility of increasing bits per cell. 4 bits per cell is used in some flash, and I have read that DARPA is interested in 8 bits per cell. Obviously, the endurance falls rapidly while the capacity returns are diminishing, but I wouldn't be shocked to see at least 3D QLC NAND.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday May 13 2016, @04:26AM
Hey if they do it? I'll be more than happy to eat my words...but I ain't holding my breath. At the shop i judge by what I see walk through the door and HDDs? Yeah the drives today tend to give ya plenty of warning if you don't drop the thing, the SSDs? I don't know how many of them I've had to shitcan with NO warning, you just flip the switch and...nothing.
Of course that goes to the other "dirty little secret" when it comes to flash...the controllers. I don't know if the controllers are expensive so they are cheaping out, run hot, or what but I've seen way too many drive controller failures on the things and nobody has come up with a solution. I said years ago they should have a secondary "read only" controller that if the R/W failed you could at least get your stuff back but nobody has done it yet. Oh that reminds me...another positive of HDDs, even if the drive fails you can get your stuff back by "doing a frankenstein" and swapping the platters. I have had to do this before, this one little old lady had her only pics of her dead grandson on a drive that failed, i threw together a clean box using plastic wrap, a clear plastic tub and some dishwashing gloves, took apart the drives and managed to get it to run long enough to give her the pics. If that would have been an SSD? She would have never seen those pics again, AFAIK even if you hire a service they can't get the data back as each drive uses its own key so the data you recover would be so much gibberish.
BTW...did you know Intel has a kill switch on their SSDs? Lose too many cells and your data goes buh bye. I've not been a fan of chipzilla for many years but after reading that I wouldn't take an Intel SSD if you paid me. Makes me wonder how many of those "controller failure" issues I've had with other drives have been kill switches.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.