Here's a challenge: do you reckon you can fill half-a-terabyte of memory using only a smartphone?
For some people, we're sure, the answer will be along the lines of “hold my beer while I set my camera to HDR mode and snap some selfies”. So the good news is that from February, you'll be able to lay out the readies on a 512 GB microSDXC card from Integral Memory.
At a transfer rate of 80 megabytes per second, you'd need more than an hour and a half to transfer a full card's worth of data; last year's 400 GB monster from SanDisk (no longer the world's biggest little memory card) still has the edge there, claiming a 100 MB/second transfer rate.
Integral's 512GB microSDXC V10, UHS-I U1 card is fast enough to meet V10 (Video speed class 10) for capturing full HD video.
Integral has put up a web page and a Spec sheet (pdf) for it.
Now we can set them up as media hubs for all.
Related Stories
Lexar's 1TB SD card is the first you can actually buy
SanDisk showed off a 1TB SD prototype a couple of years ago, but the final product never made it to market. Lexar's Professional 633x line of SDHC and SDXC UHS-I cards, however, is now listed for sale in capacities from 16GB all the way up to the flagship 1TB. That card claims read speeds of up to 95MB/s and write speeds of 70MB/s, though it's only rated as V30/U3, which guarantees sustained write performance of 30MB/s.
(Not microSD.)
Related: Half a Terabyte in Your Smartphone? Yup. That's Possible Now
SD Association Raises Max Capacity to 128 TB, Speed to 985 MB/s Using PCIe and NVMe
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
Version 7.0 of the SD standard finally raises the storage limit to above 2 TB, which was being rapidly approached by both full size SD cards (1 TB) and microSD cards (512 GB). It also adds an SD Express mode, which can raise speeds up to 985 MB/s, from a previous limit of 624 MB/s:
Soon you will be able to purchase new SD cards with the SD Version 7.0 specification. The new specification supports up to 985MB/s of throughput, which comes courtesy of PCIe and NVMe interfaces, and up to 128TB of capacity. That's quite the jump over the current 2TB limit.
985MB/s of throughput for a simple SD card may seem ludicrous, but higher-resolution video, VR, automotive use-cases, and IoT applications are steadily encroaching upon the performance limits of today's products.
[...] The specification has reserved space for new pins for future use, so it also provides room for forward progress (PDF). The specification also accommodates up to 1.8W of power consumption, which will help boost performance. The NVMe 1.3 protocol also brings several new features to SD cards, like Host Memory Buffer (HMB), which sets aside a small portion of system memory to boost performance, and Multi-Queue support, which improves performance during simultaneous file transfers.
Press release. Also at PetaPixel.
Previously: Western Digital Demos SD Card Using PCIe Gen 3 x1 Interface for 880 MB/s Read Speed
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
Huawei's Nano Memory Cards are replacing microSD on its latest phones
Alongside the slate of new phones Huawei announced today was an interesting addition: a new type of expandable storage the company is calling Nano Memory (NM), which replaces the traditional microSD card in the newly announced Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro.
Huawei says that NM cards, which are identical in size and shape to a Nano SIM card, are 45 percent smaller than a microSD card, and come in at least a 256GB storage and 90MB/s transfer speed version that the company showed off onstage.
On the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro, the NM Card goes in one of the slots on the dual-SIM tray, with users having to choose between extra storage or a second SIM card.
The SD 5.0 standard added a 90 MB/s write speed class, intended to allow for 8K and 360° video recording.
The densest microSD cards available store 512 GB, so this 45% smaller 256 GB card could be of a comparable storage density.
Related: Samsung to Offer New Type of Flash Memory Card
Western Digital Demos SD Card Using PCIe Gen 3 x1 Interface for 880 MB/s Read Speed
SD Association Raises Max Capacity to 128 TB, Speed to 985 MB/s Using PCIe and NVMe
Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first one-terabyte (TB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 2.1, for use in next-generation mobile applications. Just four years after introducing the first UFS solution, the 128-gigabyte (GB) eUFS, Samsung has passed the much-anticipated terabyte threshold in smartphone storage. Smartphone enthusiasts will soon be able to enjoy storage capacity comparable to a premium notebook PC, without having to pair their phones with additional memory cards.
[...] Within the same package size (11.5mm x 13.0mm), the 1TB eUFS solution doubles the capacity of the previous 512GB version by combining 16 stacked layers of Samsung's most advanced 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash memory and a newly developed proprietary controller.
It has been speculated that the 1 TB chips are destined for the Samsung Galaxy S10.
The UFS package is smaller than a microSD card (which is 15.0mm × 11.0mm × 1.0mm), so 1 TB microSD cards could be produced soon. The current record is 512 GB.
Previously: Samsung 256 GB UFS 2.0 Phone Storage is Faster than some SATA SSDs
Samsung to Offer New Type of Flash Memory Card
Samsung Announces 512 GB NAND Chips for Smartphones
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:47AM (11 children)
I won't use Android for the same reason I won't purchase the current model of MacBook Pro.
That MacBook Pro has two USB Type C sockets. One of the sockets will have a power plug in it most of the time.
Apple's brilliant plan is to force all its users to buy lots of dongles just so that today's MacBook Pro can work just like the one I bought in 2013, which had lots of IO sockets. I never needed a dongle.
My iPhone 7 has 256 GB of Flash. I'm quite close to using up all the space because I'm heavily into music.
The way I find new bands is to listen to http://www.radioparadise.com/ [radioparadise.com] then write down the artists and album names in the Notes app.
From time to time I go to a record store - yes I still call such Compact Disc stores "record" stores - I purchase some of the albums that I listed in Notes.
It is commonly claimed that albums containing hit songs have "filler" for the rest of the trucks. In my experience that is not the case.
I expect that's because artists who are good enough to get airtime at Radio Paradise don't suck.
I own roughly four hundred CDs. I recently started ripping to 320 kBps MP3 files because I can tell the difference between 192 kBps MP3s and FLACs.
Many claim that's impossible. Many don't listen to music as much as I do: listening to 192 MP3s for any length of time makes me feel tired. That's not - yet - the case with 320.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:07AM (3 children)
So what do you do for fun?
(Score: 3, Touché) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:21AM (2 children)
I Am Absolutely Serious.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:26AM (1 child)
That's cool. You do you.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 24 2018, @11:57PM
you have not lived until you have read my latest journal:
An NSFW Review of Portland's Oregon Theater [soylentnews.org]
You can expect me to be there every Saturday evening until the heat death of the Universe.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:37AM (1 child)
I'd love a truck for meself. Wheredyasay was that Compact Disk store yer spoke of?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:52AM
It's on Burnside about three blocks west of Powells City Of Books.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @12:13PM (2 children)
Then why are you ripping to MP3s? Phone MMPs can play other types of music files than MP3s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @01:01PM (1 child)
Probably because iPhones do not support much else.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:11PM
You can encode to ALA (Apple Lossless Audio) in iTunes if you think you can hear the compression on a 160-320 VBR MP3 coming out of a good modern encoder like iTunes (or an even better one if you know where to look).
Unfortunately that won't fix the dynamic range compression the studio did to the master recording before shipping the album.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:15PM
Claimed by whom? The big singles on an album are usually good, but far more often my favorite tracks are to be found in the "filler" that would never see play on the radio.
That said, I have heard albums more on the pop end that have a "filler" problem. I have a feeling though that it's less that the rest of the album is filler for the single and more that the single is the one that unintentionally hit exactly the right requirements to be a big hit.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday January 24 2018, @10:16PM
Eh? Here I thought their brilliant plan is to force everyone to go wireless and the Cloud (specifically iCloud). I like the first part of that plan (wireless) cause I really detest cables but I detest cloud storage more - we are seeing more wifi enabled external disks now so that may plug that gap.
The only problem I see with Apple's plan though is that is poses economic hurdles for frugal folks like me, going cable-less has an added premium. On the other hand Apple's target crowd ain't me - I do wish them success though so that it gets mass adoption and prices go down for that cable-less lifestyle.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 24 2018, @08:12AM (10 children)
Secure Digital eXtended Capacity [wikipedia.org] (SDXC) raised the maximum capacity limit to 2048 GB, when using the exFAT file system. That was in version 3.01 of the Secure Digital specification in 2009.
The latest, Version 5.0 (2016), didn't raise the maximum capacity limit, even though it was focused on stuff like 8K video recording which wouldn't take long to fill that. It was mostly concerned with higher transfer speeds to ensure the 4K/8K/VR video could even be recorded and stored in real time.
The ~2 TB limit is shared between all sizes of SD cards, namely microSD and the full size SD. On the last story [soylentnews.org], I calculated that SD has about 4.65x the area and 9.77x the volume of microSD. So a 2 TB SD card could definitely be created and sold today (the largest being sold right now is 1 TB from SanDisk [theverge.com]).
In short, it's time to ditch exFAT and raise the 2 TB limit to a petabyte or an exabyte or something. It is conceivable that increasing the number of 3D NAND layers while shrinking feature size, possibly with an increase to up to 8-bits-per-cell, could allow density to increase by 500x (with only about 125x needed to be able to create a 1000 TB full-sized SD card). So something like 64 TB or 1000 TB (1 PB) for the new limit could be too low. Raise it to 64 exabytes instead.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @08:28AM (6 children)
In short, it's time to ditch exFAT and raise the 2 TB limit to a petabyte or an exabyte or something
The maximum size of an exFAT volume is 128 PB.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 24 2018, @08:39AM (4 children)
Right you are. Let's see them raise it to that and see the NAND manufacturers try to increase NAND density by ~16,000x.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 24 2018, @10:39AM (3 children)
They are going to need a faster interface first. Even using the fastest speed from TFA and your low-ball figure of 64TB it would take over a week to copy everything off a full disk. Four months for your 1PB disk.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 24 2018, @11:32AM (2 children)
The speed is going to scale up. The more parallel nature of 3D NAND could help that. It's not going to remain the same, and it won't be as bad as hard disk speed scaling.
SanDisk advertises a card [sandisk.com] with up to 275MB/s read, 100MB/s write.
The maximum transfer speed in the standard is higher (312-624 MB/s):
The "video speed classes" recently added to the standard are met if a minimum sequential write speed can be sustained, with 90 MB/s being the highest one (which they claim is sufficient for 8K @ 120 FPS video recording).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 24 2018, @04:14PM (1 child)
At 624 MB/s it will still take 28 hours to read a 64TB disk. 18 days for 1PB.
I think they are going to need to do some sort of multiple serial buses in parallel thing, which is going to mean a whole new standard.
Maybe something like a miniturised old fashioned parallel port, but with each pin acting as an individual high speed serial link.
That said, I can still see a use for these cards, in that you could load your entire media/audio/book libraries on one and have everything available all the time.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:37PM
Again, 624 MB/s is the *current maximum* in the standard. It is likely to increase in future iterations of the standard, although the speeds will lag behind high performance SSDs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @12:15PM
That's not the only reason to ditch exfat.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:17PM (2 children)
What's your alternative to exFAT?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:36PM (1 child)
I don't care. I'm sure they can either use exFAT without the artificial 2 TB limit or find another file system that works fine.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday January 24 2018, @10:20PM
No other filesystem is supported by everything in the non-free world. And unless somebody with muscle (Google, Red Hat, Canonical) picks a FOSS winner and pushes it hard, nothing ever will be.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by mobydisk on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:30PM (4 children)
Android supports removable Flash media which is great. Unfortunately, you can't *truly* put apps on the SD card. Sure, there is an option to do so, but it usually only moves a small percentage of the actual data onto the card. So I have a 16GB internal memory on my S5, and I have a 1GB app, with 100MB of that app is on the SD card. I'll upgrade to a new Android phone and buy a bigger SD once they fix this. Until then, most of what I need the SD card for is wasted.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:25PM (3 children)
Android now supports mounting the SD cards as removable media or mount as system. Meaning format the card to ext3/4 and mount it where programs are stored. Expanding internal memory.
(Score: 1) by magnesium on Wednesday January 24 2018, @09:06PM (2 children)
do you have a url with details?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @09:55PM
Since marshmallow.
Ever hear of google?
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:21PM
No need. Put a new blank SD card and it will ask you to format for external removable or expand internal memory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @08:16AM
No such thing and I don't just mean I don't have one but that nobody really owns their smartphone.
TPTB: We'll make them carry a propaganda and spy device -- and make them pay for it!