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
Related Stories
Western Digital has demonstrated an SD card that can hit up to 880 MB/s sequential read and 430 MB/s sequential write speeds.
Western Digital demonstrated an experimental SD card featuring a PCIe Gen 3 x1 interface at Mobile World Congress. Meanwhile, the SD Card Association is calling upon the industry to adopt PCIe as a standard interface and to support the development of a complete SD PCIe standard.
Western Digital is demonstrating a system featuring an M.2-to-SD adapter with an SD card that offers 880 MB/s sequential read speeds as well as up to 430 MB/s sequential write speeds, according to the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. The drive uses the existing UHS-II/III pins to construct a PCIe 3.0 x1 interface with the system (via a mechanical adapter) and probably standard PCIe voltage with a converter. The company is not disclosing the type of memory or the controller that power the SD PCIe card, but it is clear that we are dealing with a custom solution. Meanwhile, Western Digital claims that the implementation costs of a PCIe interface is not high as one might expect, as a PCIe x1 PHY is not all that large.
Western Digital further notes that the SD card with a PCIe interface is not standard and will not hit the market any time soon, but is showing off the concept anyhow as they have seen interest from certain parties for this kind of removable storage solutions.
This exceeds the 312-624 MB/s data rates and UHS-III bus specified by version 6.0 (February 2017) of the Secure Digital standard.
Related: Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording
SanDisk Announces a 400 GB MicroSD Card
Half a Terabyte in Your Smartphone? Yup. That's Possible Now
Two companies have announced 1 terabyte microSDXC cards at Mobile World Congress 2019:
Micron's fingernail-sized card uses 96-layer 3D NAND configured as QLC (4bits/cell) storage and delivers up to 100MB/s read and 95MB/s write burst performance helped by a dynamically sized SLC cache.
WD's SanDisk's UHS-I microSDXC, meanwhile, boasts "up to" speeds of 160MB/s reads and 90MB/s writes.
[...] Random IO is up to 4,000 IOPS for reads and 2,000 for writes for both Micron and SanDisk's kit.
The SanDisk 1 TB microSD card will launch at $450 in April, or $200 for a 512 GB version.
The Secure Digital 3.01 specification defines a maximum capacity of 2 TB (2048 GB) for SDXC and microSDXC cards. The Secure Digital 7.0 specification introduced the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) format with a maximum capacity of 128 TB.
Also at Tom's Hardware, The Verge.
See also: 512 GB of UFS 3.0 Storage: Western Digital iNAND MC EU511
Previously: SanDisk Announces a 400 GB MicroSD Card
Half a Terabyte in Your Smartphone? Yup. That's Possible Now
Samsung Announces Production of 1 Terabyte Universal Flash Storage for Smartphones
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
As of mid-December, Nintendo sold 10 million Switch consoles worldwide, after around 9 months of availability. The Switch outpaced sales of most other consoles in their initial months, except for the PS4.
Some big titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (an influence on Zelda: Breath of the Wild) have been ported to Nintendo Switch. But the ability to port certain games may be hindered by the delayed release of 64 GB "game cards" (proprietary ROM cartridges) for the system:
Those wishing for 64GB Nintendo Switch game cards will have to keep waiting. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Nintendo pushed back the rollout of 64GB game cards until 2019, citing "technical issues" as the problem. Game developers get Switch cards from Nintendo, so this means that they'll have to wait to get game cards that can support big titles.
[...] Nintendo initially attempted to alleviate the storage issue with the Switch's microSD card slot, which can hold an extra 2TB of space. However, 2TB microSD cards aren't available yet, and not every microSD card is the same. Some big titles require high-speed microSD cards to run properly.
While many mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch can support up to 2 TB of microSD storage, the largest currently in production is SanDisk's 400 GB card, which currently retails for $250.
CNET: Nintendo Switch was 2017's best gadget. What does it mean for 2018?
The Verge 2017 tech report card: Nintendo
Previously: Nintendo to More Than Double Production of Switch; Success Rooted in Wii U's Failure
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:26PM (3 children)
I am curious to know if it is actually any more difficult to manufacture microsd than sd since it is smaller. It seems like it may not be?
Or is it just a question of chip size, with cost and availability of a smaller chip being different?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:51PM
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/14055/how-can-so-many-memory-cells-fit-on-microsd-card [stackexchange.com]
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554 [bunniestudios.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital [wikipedia.org]
MicroSD size is 15.0×11.0×1.0 mm (0.591×0.433×0.039 in). That's 165 mm2.
512 Gb to 1 Tb die sizes with up to 96 layers are in the works. They vary in size by manufacturer and generation, but here are some die sizes [theregister.co.uk]:
So you can see that some flash dies will fit right into this size, with some allowance for stuff on the edges. They are stacked in there too.
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(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday September 01 2017, @03:18PM (1 child)
I am in the industry and the manufacturing details are why I'm reading the article. Unfortunately there isn't an announcement how they made the chip, but speculation is that Toshiba made it with their new quad-level cell memory.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 01 2017, @08:11PM
It could still be TLC since TLC is being used at 768 Gb AFAIK:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=45504 [cdrinfo.com]
QLC capacity is only a 33% increase over TLC of the same density so it's not impossible to get to 1 Tb or higher with TLC, by just going to 96 layers or something like that.
WD Announces 64-Layer 3D QLC NAND With 768 Gb Per Die, to be Shown at Flash Memory Summit [soylentnews.org]
Western Digital Announces 96-Layer 3D NAND, Including Both TLC and QLC [soylentnews.org]
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(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:50PM (3 children)
400GB? And 200GB before that? What the heck is wrong with these idiots at SanDisk? Don't they know that these cards are always supposed to have capacities that are a power of 2?
(Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:58PM
Those are powers of 2. In particular 200 = 27.643856189774724 and 400 = 28.643856189774724.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:59PM (1 child)
AFAIK these were based on 256GB and (I assume) 512GB chips.
Alternative theory is they were 128+64+8 and 256+128+16GB chips internally.
Third alternative: The actual chips are being developed for base 10 storage marketing and these values are closest.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:19PM
Fourth possibility: FLASH cells develop errors, so you reserve 20% capacity on your 256GB assembly and market it as 200GB
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:35PM
The 200 GB is still at $80 normally but it seems to drop to $60 every once in a while:
https://www.androidcentral.com/sandisks-200gb-microsd-card-down-just-59-again [androidcentral.com]
256 GB is available from Samsung and SanDisk for at least $130, or a bit less on sale [droid-life.com]. Or as low [camelcamelcamel.com] as $100 [camelcamelcamel.com] according to camelcamelcamel.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:45PM (3 children)
The bandwidth math should be done with Shinkansen or TGVs, not silly 787s.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:28PM (2 children)
At least the old standard of a station wagon full of floppies was something an average end user could actually do. Not many people have personal access to airliners or commuter trains.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:30PM (1 child)
Tapes? Tapes. I thought floppies sounded wrong.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:35PM
Well, in many cases in Europe or Japan, your disaster recovery using offsite backups would come in someone's bag in a train.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:58PM (3 children)
The current SD specification defines a maximum size of 2 TB for all sizes (SD, miniSD which nobody uses anymore, and microSD).
SanDisk announced a 1 TB SD card in September. This microSD stores 400 GB.
An SD card has about 4.65x the area and 9.77x the volume of a microSD card. It seems that a 2-4 TB SD card could be made today. And flash memory density is going to increase a lot more, especially when we see things like 128-layer QLC 3D NAND hit the market. So the SD Card Association better raise the limit real soon.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:28PM (2 children)
I think that miniSD is what happens when two microSD cards mate.
I have an old tobacco tin with a whole bunch of different storage cards in it, SD for my camera, various USB sticks, and several microSD cards.
I recently found a miniSD card in there, and I have no idea how it got there, I'm pretty sure I didn't put it there, and my kids have no idea either, so the only explanation is that some microSD cards mated.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @10:34PM (1 child)
miniSD = 21.5×20.0×1.4 mm
microSD = 15.0×11.0×1.0 mm
miniSD has 2.6x the area and 3.649x the volume.
Apparently nobody bothered to make a miniSDXC so the maximum capacity is 16 GB. That card will be living in your tin, unused, until you put it in a museum.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Friday September 01 2017, @03:26AM
It's 2GB (I think), so when it gets to 8GB I will release it into the wild, it should be big enough to look after itself by then.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:22PM
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11793/western-digital-launches-sandisk-ultra-microsd-card-with-400-gb-capacity [anandtech.com]
10 year warranty, designed to operate from -13ºF to 185ºF (-25ºC to 85ºC).
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday September 01 2017, @04:24AM (4 children)
I totally expected to learn how much bandwidth a dreamliner has, but aside from the volume of a card, I haven't gotten an answer. WTH??
787-10 has 191.4 m³ of cargo space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Specifications [wikipedia.org]
A microSD card is 165 mm³ (or 0.000000165 m³): https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=21354&page=1&cid=562247#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
So the plane can hold 1,160,000,000 400gb cards, or 464,000,000,000 gb, or 464,000,000 terabytes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=464000000000+gb&t=lm&ia=answer [duckduckgo.com]
Undoubtedly, I will have fucked up the math and will soon be corrected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:03AM (2 children)
Or just say 464 Exabytes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @11:35AM (1 child)
Will SanDisk ever make enough of these MicroSDs to fill the 787?
When does memory get so dense that all the production from a memory factory can be hauled away in the proverbial station wagon?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 01 2017, @08:04PM
This is for all NAND, not just microSD cards, but it should give you an idea of how much NAND is being produced in bytes by the industry:
Samsung: NAND flash industry will triple output to 253EB by 2020 [kitguru.net] (2015)
NAND that's that... Flash chip industry worth twice disk drive biz [theregister.co.uk] (2017)
July 13, 2015: SanDisk Ships its Two Billionth microSD™ card as Technology Marks 10-year Anniversary [sandisk.com]
That's over SanDisk's entire history of producing the cards. They say that the 2 billion microSD cards could store over 11.1 billion megabytes. So just an average of 5.55 megabytes per card.
But there are some holes in SanDisk's story. This page [sandisk.com] says they shipped 128 MB microSD cards in 2004. That was when they called them TransFlash, before they donated the format to the SD Card Association. And the volume of cards was much smaller back then: "Five million cards are shipped in its first year." There's no way the average size of each over the history of microSD could be as small as 5 MB. The real average has to be closer to 2-8 GB.
So SanDisk has made well over 1 billion microSD cards to date, but is a couple orders of magnitude away from the average being 400 GB per card. Industry-wide the number of microSD cards sold should be substantially higher than 2 billion.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Friday September 01 2017, @04:29PM
I didn't count the zeroes, but I somehow doubt that someone will deal with the logistics of opening, let alone recycling, 1 billion blisters. And then stash those microSDs to optimize space.
Oh!
Let me call Satan, I've got a great idea for him to torture his formerly-in-marketing guests...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 01 2017, @06:41PM (1 child)
Neither my phone nor tablets can see anything more than 30 gigs, so anything more is wasted.
When masked police can stop you on the street and demand that you prove citizenship, your nation is a POLICE STATE
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 01 2017, @07:44PM
It could be highly useful for small form factor computers, robots, and all kinds of video cameras including ones mounted on drones. That's why the speed is mentioned prominently. There is a need for SD and microSD storage to have fast enough write performance to store 4K, 8K, 360-degree video, or high framerate 720p/1080p (the GoPro Hero4 Black for example can record 1440p at 80 FPS, 1080p at 120 FPS, and 720p at 240 FPS).
Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording [soylentnews.org]
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