from the put-your-whole-system-on-a-tiny-chip dept.
SD cards hop on the PCIe 4.0 bus to hit 4GB/s with version 8.0 of storage spec:
As outlined in a whitepaper [PDF] this month, the new spec will let existing SD Express and microSD Express cards employ PCIe 4.0 and NVMe to deliver a top speed data transfer speed of [3938 MB/s].
While the new spec is backwards-compatible, the latest top speed will only come with a card reader capable of connecting to the extra row of pins present on SD Express cards that support dual PCIe lanes.
[...] The good news is that SD Express and microSD Express cards can still get to 1970 MB/s on a device with a single PCIe 4.x lane under version 8 of the specification, and SD Express can get there with a pair of 3.x lanes. Which is rather faster than many SSDs and, as SD Express can climb to 128TB on a single card, a rather tasty storage option.
Also at The Verge, PetaPixel, and Yahoo! Finance.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:51PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Comparison_2 [wikipedia.org]
Previous maximum was 985 MB/s using 1x PCIe 3.1 lane, in version 7.0 of the spec.
The highest theoretical capacity of 128 TB / 128 TiB could be filled in around 18 to 20 hours at 1969 MB/s, or 9 to 10 hours at 3938 MB/s.
In practice, that won't ever happen since NAND is too slow. It could take a new non-volatile memory technology to hit and sustain those speeds. Hopefully one that is also cheaper, denser, with better endurance and data retention.
SD capacity could hit ~128-140 TB with just plain old NAND. microSD is already at 1 TB and SD cards are about 10x larger physically. The two 1 TB microSD cards [anandtech.com] on the market use 96-layer NAND, probably not the densest available, and 500+ layers is already on roadmaps. microSD should hit at least 10 TB.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 20 2020, @08:01PM (8 children)
A cursory search indicates that 4k video speeds are about 7MB/s. Since the current SD card standards can handle 8k video [sdcard.org] and the cheaper ones can handle 4k video rates, what is this targeting? Holographic recording?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @08:19PM (3 children)
Uncompressed video is a lot higher than that. Resolution could be much higher, e.g. 8K or 360-degree video. But good luck sustaining those speeds with QLC NAND. This is more about future proofing and maybe making smaller transfers faster.
If you look at page 5 of the white paper, you can see some new pins are needed to support two PCIe lanes on the full SD card. But they can get to 1969 MB/s with PCIe 4.0 and no new pins. So why not?
There are some other advantages of SD Express mentioned in the white paper, but it looks like they are not specific to these two new speeds.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 21 2020, @01:29PM (2 children)
Raw video? Outside of movie studios, who uses raw video? It's too big. Just 1 minute of HDTV quality (1080p), uncompressed, at 30 frames per second, and assuming true color (24 bits per pixel), no audio, is roughly 11G of data. A 90 minute movie would require 1T of storage.
Crank that up to 8K at 60 frames per second, and 48 bit "Deep Color", and the storage requirement is 64x more. Or, 128x more for 120fps. Throw in a 2nd camera for stereoscopic vision for 3D video, and that's another doubling. And I understand there's talk of going up to 16K resolutions some day. Lossless video compression (lossless H.265) can reduce storage requirements to very roughly 10%. 10% of 256T is still an awful lot of data.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 21 2020, @01:43PM
I would have to do a bit more research to see what storage standards cinematic 6K+ cameras are using these days. Maybe this helps make SD more relevant to that market, maybe not.
For filming with drones or action cameras (GoPro), SD Express or microSD Express is relevant. Less weight helps, less power usage helps. FPS can be very high for recording slow-mo shots. Apparently, GoPro does up to 240 FPS 720p/1080p, I could have sworn there was a 720 FPS model out there.
Based on my crapculations, the ultimate target for 360-degree video cameras should be around 32K resolution [soylentnews.org], with VR headsets displaying 16K resolution (1/4 of the sphere with very wide/tall FOV).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:03PM
H.265 tiers [wikipedia.org] include up to full 8K (8,192×4,320) @ 120 Hz.
H.266 [wikipedia.org] will have support for 16K, 360-degree videos (not sure what that entails), and 48-bit deep color (16 bpc):
On top of everything you mentioned, there is High Dynamic Range, which may or may not eat into that color depth. I think it depends on the standard.
AV1 looks similar to H.265. Nobody knows what AV2 will add yet, but it will probably be more of the same.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:06PM
Backup and restore.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:22PM
According to this article, 8K is 48Gbps uncompressed: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/130238-8k-uhdtv-how-do-you-send-a-48gbps-tv-signal-over-terrestrial-airwaves [extremetech.com]
It sounds extreme now, but I also used to think 720 HD looked good enough. While I still use my 720 TV all the time, I'm trying to move to 4K for any recordings in an effort to future proof.
As others have pointed out, we are going to hit the RW limitations of the card. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the new non-volatile memory technologies like X-Point find film and TV as early adopters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @01:08AM
You'd only want 8k on an SD card for video production. Another commenter gave you the rate, I'll give you the calculator. [extron.com] Chroma sub-sampling and compression reduce these rates massively for end delivery.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday May 21 2020, @10:24PM
Probably anyone who wants to copy the recorded video off of the cards at speeds greater than real time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jurov on Wednesday May 20 2020, @08:57PM (1 child)
So any PCIe vulnerability means that SD card can slurp whole memory in few seconds?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @11:24PM
Sounds like you need more ram! :-P