Taiwanese Firms To Launch a 2 Terabyte Memory Card

Krafty Koder writes "The Register is reporting that a consortium of Taiwanese firms are to launch a 2 Terabyte memory card at the Taipei International Electronics Show (Taitronics) on the 8th of October, with mass production expected to start next year. The card will measure 3.2 x 2.4 x 0.1cm according to this DigiTimes.com report" The reports say that this is supposed to be a "new type" of card, so the details are still quite sketchy. Offical unveiling will happen in early October.

Comments

IDE interface ?

[spiny]

or even SCSI - it would be nice to replace all my bulky (by comapison) 3 1/2 inch IDE drives.

Re:IDE interface ?

[swordboy]

If you read the article, you'll find that the new format "supports up to 2TB" of storage. They mention nothing about initial densities.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The format supports up to 2 TB .. there isn't a 2 TB memory card coming out .. as usual slashdot deliberately overhypes. Probably they won't even correct the posting.

I suppose they need the clicks ... no place for ethics.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Reivec]

Even with "up to" 2TB, this is still pretty amazing. Mainly because of that transfer rate. 120MB a sec it pretty damn quick and it runs on very low power. If the latency is good as well then this puts hard drives to same, esp since it would have less if any moving parts. If they can pull off cards like this of equal size to HDDs with not a HUGE price gap, we might see people start to turn away from old school HDD. We have heard talk about moving away from them for a long time because it is doubtfull that they will ever be able to hold enough data to satisfy us in the future. :)
(although wouldn't want an IDE interface, that isn't fast enough to support this card. SATA maybe.)

Re:IDE interface ?

[nmk]

Nothing to see here, are you insane. Depending on what the price of the card is, this could potentially replace hard drives in many applications. If its cheap enough, perhaps even in Laptops. Its transfer speed is fast enough to replace a hard drive, plus, being solid state, it won't develop mechanical problems. It'll take up substantially less space and consume less power. In this age of miniaturization, and subsequent problems with power consumption and heat output, it seems a great solution.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Glock27]

If the latency is good as well then this puts hard drives to same, esp since it would have less if any moving parts.

It will have no moving parts (it is apparently Flash or some similar technology) and should have latencies in microseconds instead of milliseconds.

I note that Memory Stick also has a 2 TB upper limit, so I think that part of things is more a theoretical maximum instead of something we might see in the near term.

However, a 16 GB version might be a nice swap device for an 8 GB AMD64 box - if the price is right of course, and the max number of write operations is reasonable. ;-)

BTW the correct dimensions are 24x18x1.4 mm.

Re:IDE interface ?

[ameoba]

"Supports 2 TB" could mean "uses 41-bit addressing" (2^41 B = 2TB). Current IDE interfaces with 48 bit addressing "support" up to 256TB of storage but you're not going to see that kind of density on a single device any time soon.

As for replacement of mechanical HDDs - all current non-volatile rewritable storage has a limited number of write cycles, making them less than ideal for HDD replacement (imagine the damage your swapfile would do to one). If somebody had figured out a way to work around this, I'm sure it would be the #1 thing mentioned in the press release.

Re:IDE interface ?

[nmk]

Ok, but don't you think that we don't have enough information about the technology yet to just write it off. If the cards come out with sizable storage capacities, they could replace HD's on MP3 players and laptops. The fact that they're substantially faster than existing cards is exciting news in itself. Perhaps this is just one step closer to a complete solid state storage system in your laptop. I, personally, would love to get rid of my hard drive. It uses a lot of power, makes noise, takes up a lot of space, and is prone to failure.

Re:IDE interface ?

[ezzzD55J]

Small yet important nitpick..

"Supports 2 TB" could mean "uses 41-bit addressing" (2^41 B = 2TB). Current IDE interfaces with 48 bit addressing "support" up to 256TB of storage but you're not going to see that kind of density on a single device any time soon.

It is 48 bit addressing, but we're not addressing bytes, we're addressing 512-byte blocks. So the 48-bit ATA standard can address 144 petabytes.

So those 2TB are probably addressing blocks using 32 bits, a much more sensible number than 41 bits.

Re:IDE interface ?

[orasio]

Right now you could use a big RAID of small chips, to get rid of your hdd (like a DIMM filled with flash) . Using some intelligence at the file system level, limited writing cycles might not be an issue.

So, solid state storage, hundreds of Gb, is feasible right now, although not cheap.

Parent (and GGGreat parent) highlight the fact that this is not important, unless it is. Many press releases claim great storage capacities, that's not new. Something new would be some chip maker making some actual chips.
If press releases had actual value, we would already have holodecks.

Re:IDE interface ?

[beef3k]

Yes, Memory Stick Pro/Duo allready has a maximum (theoretical) capacity of 2TB.

The news is the transfer rate which is more than twice that of High speed MMC cards (currently the fastest available) and six times that of the Memory Stick Pro/Duo.

So there is something to see here, but not a stamp sized 2TB storage device.

Re:IDE interface ?

[cbreaker]

Every time one of these things is announced, with "Up to a zillion bazillion petabytes capacity!!" there's a bunch of people like you that insist that this new fancy thing could replace hard drives.

If recent history has been any lesson at all, then we've already seen that initial offerings are usually 10% of the claimed "up to" capacity, they aren't as fast, and they are extremely expensive.

Have you seen the prices on the top capacity memory cards available today? Many thousands of dollars in some cases.

Re:IDE interface ?

[hatrisc]

if you're going to complain about this so much, why not use a microdrive with an ide-compact flash adapter. 4 gigabytes would be sufficient for most people's laptop usage.

Re:IDE interface ?

[ca1v1n]

Actually, we do have non-volatile memory with unlimited write cycles. It's just a lot more expensive, so it doesn't get used much, particularly in very high volume. It sounds like this technology is sufficiently flexible that they could put whatever sort of memory they see fit on the inside and it would work the same way. You put in the expensive stuff, and you've got a replacement for the general purpose hard drive. You put in the cheap stuff and you've just replaced a media storage disk.

Re:IDE interface ?

[drinkypoo]

Even using 2GB DIMMs the most ram you could get in a single 3.5" hard drive bay is about 16GB, and as you allude in your comment, it would be intensely expensive to install just one drive ike this, let alone an array. It's at least $100/GB to buy memory in 512MB sticks and very high capacity DIMMs cost more per MB, not to mention you're going to want to use ECC memory.

Re:IDE interface ?

[jdray]

Really? You must know a different set of "most people" than I do. I'm about 60% full on my 15 GB hard drive on the laptop I got in March. Mind you, I'm running SUSE 9.1 Pro with a lot of developer tools, but there are no media files (mp3, ogg, divx, etc.) that a lot of people have stored that take up a lot of space. If you're still running Win98 with a small app collection and all ten of your CDs ripped to mp3s, then maybe 4 gig will work out for you.

Re:IDE interface ?

[hatrisc]

well, the majority of people use laptops for surfing the web at coffee shops, and typing up word documents that i know of. it all depends of course on what you need. i was being sarcastic but semi serious.

Re:IDE interface ?

[iabervon]

Mechanical HDDs are a current non-volatile rewritable storage technology. For that matter, HDDs don't use moving parts to read or write the data (they use moving parts to address different bits of storage).

Anyway, this is probably a protocol (and connector quality) standard, rather than a media technology. It's essentially SD with longer addresses and faster transmission. In principle, you could have a mechanical HDD in this format (you can actually get CF-format HDDs, so why not, aside from the insanity of trying to move things around in 1mm minus packaging?).

Re:IDE interface ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the table in the digitimes article. When was the last time you saw a 128GB CompactFlash card? It's almost certainly talking about pie in the sky max theoreticals instead of actual cards anywhere near 2TB.

Re:IDE interface ?

[dgatwood]

Any bets on whether this is actually probe storage? That could easily explain the claimed capacity, assuming that the technology is close enough to production quality to actually go to market.

I first heard about this stuff back in '99 or 2000. It's pretty neat stuff. The basic idea is that the limit to hard drive density is caused by the horizontal orientation (across the platter surface) of the metallic particles that represent the bits, coupled with the need to have multiple particles for each bit to avoid them changing state at room temperature.

Probe storage partially solves this problem by reorienting the bits in a vertical fashion. Instead of a spinning platter, it has a square chunk of substrate on which the particles sit. Instead of a head arm that moves in one dimension, the head arm contains multiple heads and moves in three dimensions---left/right and front/back to address a bit, then up and down to read or write the bit. By having multiple heads, it is able to read multiple bits at once and concatenate them into a few bytes of data.

Of course, this could be entirely unrelated, but it certainly would be cool if that turned out to be a viable production-quality technology this year.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Geoff-with-a-G]

Ok, but don't you think that we don't have enough information about the technology yet to just write it off.

They're not writing off the technology; they're writing off the news story. You're right, we don't know much about the technology, which means it's a non-story. If we posted everything that could, possibly, theoretically, maybe replace hard drives, we'd spend all day reading vapor stories.

In the meantime, somebody has simply taken a line from what looks like a routine product announcement and blown it out of proportion.

Re:IDE interface ?

[zonker]

so, how much do you lose w/ formatting?

Re:IDE interface ?

[Anonymous Coward]

we'd spend all day reading vapor stories.

You must be new here.

Re:IDE interface ?

[HiThere]

Nothing? 2TB is more than I have on my entire computer.

OTOH, to me this looks like a development from the cards used to store camera photos. 2TB is overkill, but it lets the current generation of digital cameras act like cheap video cams. Perhaps it's an artifact of the mfg. process. Chips more easily size things in powers of two.

If I'm right, this could easily be the start of a new generation of laptop computers. No hard disk. Little dynamic ram. Little rom. Small screens. Slow. And CHEAP! It may show up in a "Game boy advanced edition".

If this works as promissed, then the next problem is the screen. This is a problem for the electronic paper folk. That re-emphasizes CHEAP, and solves most of the battery problem (but you need to supply your own light).

Now we have something that looks roughly like a pocket book, and can work roughly like a pocket book, but is also a full (if slow) computer. This means that you don't really want to use it for playing active games...though it might manage packman. But for a lot of purposes, fast reactions aren't necessary, merely lots of data storage, portability, and cheapness. And a small amount of computation. And making backups could require a special device that could copy one card onto another.

This has all sorts of implications, depending on who developes it how. And what marketing method is choosen. (I could easily see it being developed as a closed format video player...which would cripple it's potential.)

Re:IDE interface ?

[Glonoinha]

I think he was talking about CompactFlash or something of the sort - DIMMs are great, really fast and all that but they have this nasty habit of forgetting whatever they were thinking about when the power goes off (Flash RAM doesn't.)

And yes, it would be hideously expensive at today's prices - but it wasn't too long ago that hard drives were considered a bargain at $1 / Meg, and FlashRAM is currently a tenth of that (DIMMs too.)

Re:IDE interface ?

[buck_wild]

I'm picturing your 'majority of people' having names like 'Buffy', 'Biff' and 'Todd' saying things like "That's faaabulous!"

Frankly, I would be surprised if the 'majority' of folks used their laptop devices for only those uses. Shocked, actually.

But hey, I don't travel in your circles, so your world could be much different than mine.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Mr.Cookieface]

"Specifications for the ìcards are being set by members of the Open Mobile Internet Alliance (OMIA), an initiative established by the Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association (TEEMA) and the Taipei Computer Association (TCA)."

You are getting ahead of yourself here. Specifications haven't even been set. They are working on the ideas, the products haven't even begun to be designed or manufactured yet.

It's like saying my new computer will be able to recognize my speech and talk to me like a human being would, as soon as someone writes the software to make that happen.

Re:IDE interface ?

[drinkypoo]

Sure, I remember how excited I was when ST-506 interface drives got down to $1/meg... USED. But nonetheless ram hasn't gotten much cheaper in a while. It got a lot cheaper about the time we got SDRAM, and since then it's sort of wavered around the same price while getting a lot faster.

Flash memory is much more expensive, and for what you pay for flash you could definitely put a battery in your solid state storage device. Plus, it has such a limited number of write cycles that it's not really useful in the context of the average hard disk. DRAM, on the other hand, has no real write cycle limit (since it's rewritten constantly by definition) and only has a runtime limit, which is not very limited. You can make pretty low-power memory if you're not too worried about speed, and if you're using current typical disk interfaces the speed of DRAM is pretty much irrelevant - unlike the write speed of flash, which is abysmal. Granted, if you parallelized it you could speed that up considerably.

I have heard of chips with multi-layer ICs which have flash on top of DRAM, and which do some sort of two-dimensional copy procedure when you cut power to them. That is one potential method of getting around the limited write cycle problem and the power problem at once, but it sounds pretty expensive.

Or, the very very short form: IBM's MRAM is much more exciting than the thought of using DIMMs or CF or any of that stuff. I hope we start seeing products based on it sooner rather than later.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Glonoinha]

At the 512M and 1G piece levels, CompactFlash is about the same price as pc3200 SDRAM.
SDRAM is hella faster, but CF doesn't forget when the power goes off.

While we are on the subject, whatever happened to the 'Water Drive' - it was supposed to be a water based polymer like jello that would store a GazilloBytes per cubic inch, use three lasers in a holographic fashion ionizing and deionizing at slightly higher than the molecular level, like the two layer DVD media but a lot deeper than two layers ... it was supposed to be persistent when the power went off (like a hard drive) but really fast like RAM, was supposed to blend the functionality of both long term storage and working memory. Anybody know whatever happened to the 'water drive'?

Re:IDE interface ?

[iabervon]

My guess is that the initial products that this article is about will be essentially today's SD cards, except with higher throughput. As memory density continues to increase like it has, it will eventually pass the SD-card limits and ucard will be necessary.

I wouldn't be surprised if probe storage was to the SD format what microdrives are to the CF format; a new storage technology packaged in a standard package.

Re:IDE interface ?

[wirelessbuzzers]

It is 48 bit addressing, but we're not addressing bytes, we're addressing 512-byte blocks. So the 48-bit ATA standard can address 144 petabytes.

Please note that's 144 decimal petabytes, not binary petabytes. It would be 128 binary petabytes.

Re:IDE interface ?

[Anonymous Coward]

4 Gig? that's not even enough for a Mandrake install....

Re:IDE interface ?

[Ben Hutchings]

Most Flash formats are around the same price as PC2100 SDRAM and a little less than PC3200 SDRAM. Much more expensive than HDs, of course.

Re:IDE interface ?

[drinkypoo]

I think it became a weapon for Tifa in FFVII :)

Re:IDE interface ?

[sumdumass]

what? clearly your joking. i have mandrake installed in 1 gig drives.

Learn something new everyday

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

consortium of Taiwanese firms are to launch a 2 Terabyte memory card

I didn't realize Taiwan too had a Library of Congress...

Re:Learn something new everyday

[TheoMurpse]

please tell me how this is funny...seriously. cuz i don't get it

I guess I'll wait....

[Animekiksazz]

to buy a solid state MP3 player. This sounds great. Mad expensive, but great.

Re:I guess I'll wait....

[beh]

Solid State MP3?

Why that? At that capacity, most people should be able to access solid state CDDA - so you won't even have to deal with lossy compression any more...

Re:I guess I'll wait....

[Syzar]

Why the heck would someone want solid state cdda? Solid state player capable of lossless formats like flac maybe, but not cdda. Imagine the pain of organizing huge collection of CDDA's which have no meta-data apart from CD-text.

Re:I guess I'll wait....

[mm0mm]

you mean a pocket-size solid state camcoder/video player that also plays MP3?

Re:I guess I'll wait....

[Animekiksazz]

You guys are right. The thought just didn't occur to me at the time. Lossless would definately be the way. Not sure which format I'd choose out of the bunch, but it would HAVE TO HAVE meta-data.

Re:I guess I'll wait....

[computechnica]

Sounds like the Kodak MC3 that came out in 1999. I bought one my son and it makes a good mp3 player but a crappy digicam.

Re:I guess I'll wait....

[Fweeky]

Ogg WAV? :)

Maybe Matroska; foobar2000 supports that at least.

Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not launching a 2TB memory card, they a launching a format they claim should support up to 2TB--big difference. The real news for the initial product seems to be a much faster transfer rate than the current SD format.

Re:Overstated

[Animekiksazz]

oh really?

On that note, I didn't realize CompactFlash supported up to 128 GB.

And Sony's original MemoryStick pales in comparison to all of these formats. 256 MB compared to 4 GB. Yeah... Yes I know they have MSPro but nm that.

Re:Overstated

[Animekiksazz]

I missed SM, didn't see that it was smaller, my bad.

Re:Overstated

[otisg]

Yeah, cca. 2TB difference. :(

Re:Overstated

[BorgDrone]

The original memory stick supported up to 128 MB, the 256 MB cards 'cheated' by using a switch allowing you to switch between 2 128MB banks.

Re:Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

if a story claims to outperform Moore's law by several orders of magnitude, the claim is probably false or misrepresented.

Please note that "Moore's law" is not a law of nature, but a marketing strategy of Intel...

Re:Overstated

[Animekiksazz]

Oh right, I remember that now. I keep seeing those cards available all over the place.

Re:Overstated

[rew]

The real news for the initial product seems to be a much faster transfer rate than the current SD format Not quite: Also the transferrate is an "up to" figure. The write-limit with current flash-media is simply the writing to the chips that is limiting the speed. Even if you have USB2.0 480Mbps transfer medium, will not mean you can write at that speed to something....

Re:Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

The memory stick actually only supports 1 byte. The 128 MB cards cheat by using 27 switches to allow you to switch between 128 million 1-byte banks.

They try to cover up by calling these switches "address lines" -- but we're on to their scam!

WHAT?!

[NETHED]

This has got to be wrong.

I'm going to put this down w/ the flying car and Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:WHAT?!

[adam.skinner]

Obligatory Skycar link.

Re:WHAT?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I double checked, and there is now a firm date of Dec 31 2006.
http://www.moller.com/purchase/purch_info.html

Flying cars and 2 TB memry cards. But I'm still waiting on a private holosuite...

Typo?

[Ranma21]

That has to be a typo...

Re:Typo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a translation error...

morons

[Anonymous Coward]

you morons.. this is the MAXIMUM capacity.

Incredulity?

[schmidt349]

Let me get this straight-- the hard drive manufacturers can barely come up with 500GB of storage on a single 3.5" drive and they claim to be releasing a memory-card with multi-TERABYTE storage? Either this thing has insanely high memory density or it's the size of a small Third World dictatorship, to say nothing of its cost.

Have there been any other canards to come out of Taipei in recent years? Perhaps this is just a ploy to arouse interest in their trade show; I for one don't really believe it.

Re:Incredulity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either this thing has insanely high memory density or it's the size of a small Third World dictatorship

Wow, just imagine how much data you could store in a device the size of the US!

No wait, it's not part of the third world...

Re:Incredulity?

[nz_mincemeat]

The format would probably contain enough memory space to address terabytes of pr0n, umm, I mean data.

How they actually pull it off would be interesting... beowulf clusters anybody? :p

Re:Incredulity?

[gl4ss]

if something seems 'wrong' in the slashdot headline..
then read the fucking article. slashdot headlines are no good for gaining information on wtf is going on or what the story really is about.

they will introduce a card(format) that can support 2tb sizes.. a bit more believable but not so spectacular, no? now, as to why slashdot makes these shitty headlines that could be accurate instead of empty on the spot invented hype.

Re:Incredulity?

[Short Circuit]

Yeah, but can you imagine the time required for "shred /dev/sda" ?

Re:Incredulity?

[Trifthen]

Over here at Slashdot, there's this thing called the Slashdot effect, which means a site gets an unexpected flood of traffic (from Slashdot) that its server can't handle, making the site unreachable.

Now, being that Slashdot is named Slashdot and all, why are people always surprised when others don't read the article? This isn't rocket science, people.

Re:Incredulity?

[Whyrph]

Wouldn't be that suprising if they used that nanodrive idea that they had in Scientific American a while ago. It actually uses a plastic surface that they put dents in (read/write, though), and it's supposed to be quite good. I know they had a working prototype a few years ago.

Here's the article: http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?sequencenam eCHAR=item2&methodnameCHAR=resource_getitembrowse& interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=AB626223 -FBDB-E704-7CA44F62EADC1383&ARTICLEID_CHAR=AB80F20 F-EADB-43DA-B492BE376742F897&sc=I100322

Re:Incredulity?

[mrwonton]

Or, to put it more simply, you must be new here...

Re:Incredulity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he said that Taiwan is either a dictatorship or a third-world country. He said the card would be the SIZE of a small Third World dictatorship.

Re:Incredulity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. Take a closer look at George W. Bush.

Re:Incredulity?

[gl4ss]

yeah very new.

not.

if you think that you can trust the headline to tell you anything expect the field of which the article is of then _you_ are new here. as such, if something seems unbelievable or amazing in the article the logical answer is that the headline is worded poorly(in a way that it's misguiding, which is actually worse than any headline at all) as with the 1000 other articles before it.

Re:Incredulity?

[gl4ss]

none of the sites in this case are slashdotted.

the information on what this thing is going to be was retrievable all the time.

**Dubbed 'card', the format will support up to 2TB of storage capacity within a 3.2 x 2.4 x 0.1cm card - the same size as a standard MMC unit. The new cards are said to be connector-compatible with the older format.**

"new mmc sized card format coming soon that supports up to 2tb sizes" - how hard would that have been to write in the submission?

Re:Incredulity?

[mrwonton]

Wow, way to miss what I was getting at.

I was merely implying that the parent (now great-grandparent) could have shortened his post to "You must be new here". Thats the normal way one responds to someone discovering that no one reads the articles on Slashdot. Of course, I'm sure I don't have to explain that to you, as you've got pretentious cynic thing down already, so you must not be new here.

Solid state reliability?

[nz_mincemeat]

My only objection with solid state memory like this is how many rewrites can the media sustain before failure?

I use my USB drive + MP3 player a lot but sometimes wonder how long the gadget would last...

Are there any existing tests available for perusal?

Re:Solid state reliability?

[kaiwai]

IIRC, on a good day, a normal flash card should sustain 10,000 writes without it going tits up, then again, that is average. Its kinda like the mean time of failure for hard disks, all very nice, but one can experience problems from a bad batch, whilst another customer could have nother but great luck.

Re:Solid state reliability?

[Threni]

> My only objection with solid state memory like this is how many rewrites can
> the media sustain before failure?

Depends. IBM use flash ram in their printers (ie the model 4610), and it's supposed to last 100,000 writes, so I guess if the USB things use the same stuff then that means it'll last over 100 years if you wrote to it twice a day. Lets face it - you're going to lose it or replace it with a model with enough..uh, I mean more memory before that.

I'd love a usb/mp3 player but I'm not going to pay more than £50 for one and it'd have to have a few gigs of storage so it looks like I'll be sticking with my £45 diskman which plays cds/mp3s for a little while yet.

Re:Solid state reliability?

[Dr_Java]

Surely you should be more intested in reads vs. writes. I only load songs onto my MP3 player once - but I might play each song 500 times. Maybe not a good idea as a general harddrive - but perfect for few write, many read applications.
--
New thinking in mobile and internet gaming.

What a tiny card.

[mikeophile]

Smaller than many stamps.

I wonder if anyone has tried to send a memory card like this underneath a postage stamp.

It's not like the card couldn't hold up to the rigors of the Postal Service.

Re:What a tiny card.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tested a lot of post office packages. I have tested a stamp on one side the address and return address on the other side of the stamp.

I've also tested mailing a $1 and a $5 with no envelope to see if it would make it.

I also tried to send a message with 50 $1 bills in it and said that everyone that touched the envelope could open it and take $1. I wanted to test the theory [because I had a problem] that NO ONE at the post office can open a package NO MATTER WHAT, unless they suspect something hazardous.

All packages made it safe in trips across country.

I was told they put the postage stamp in a large velum envelope.

Welcome our new memory card format overlords

[Gothmolly]

WTF? Why can't there be a standard, outside of the Linus quote "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from"?
SD/MMC for little devices (Zaurus, phones, etc) and CF for big devices (camera, Zaurus, etc).
Bah, give me a $300 2TB CF card, and you have a deal.

Re:Welcome our new memory card format overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartmedia, CompactFlash/CompactDisk, SD/MMC, Memory Stick/Pro, XD and now that new thing.

<Farnsworth>Great news everyone: that new 8-in-1 card reader you just bought is now obsolete!</Farnsworth>

Re:Welcome our new memory card format overlords

[sapbasisnerd]

Because current standards have limited addressability. CF is 128GB, SD/MMC is 4GB. The only card "standards" out there now that can break this are Sony's prorietary ones, Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Duo

Re:Welcome our new memory card format overlords

[surprise_audit]

outside of the Linus quote "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from"

I think you may be mis-attributing that quote. At least 3 sources name Dr Andrew Tanenbaum...

Here
Here
and here

While it's possible he was quoting someone else, I suspect is wasn't Linus...

Transfer Rate....

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else notice the 120MB per second data transfer?

Thats way more than double the next fastest memory card. Combine that with the 2TB of storage and I claim vapor-ware (or whatever the term is for hardware).

The *format* supports up to 2 TB

[Bastiaan]

The title appears to be exagerating a bit in announcing 2TB cards: the article itself only mentions that the format supports 2TB, not that actual 2TB cards will be available.

Not that a 2TB memory card wouldn't be nice though :-)

Re:The *format* supports up to 2 TB

[LnxAddct]

Your good ol' ide harddrive I believe can support a little over 150 petabytes of data. For some reason though I don't think we'll be seeing that anytime soon ;)
Regards,
Steve

Here's hoping

[T-Kir]

That this solid state memory doesn't suffer from the non-sequential write issues that current flash media has (AFAIK).

Added to that, I remember reading about a Cambridge university division developing their own solid state memory (don't have the details to hand, but AFAIK IBM invested money into them), point is they were estimating 2TB for a credit card sized media.

When the ucard (or whatever they call it) goes into "Mass Production", I wonder what the price ranges are and just how much they will produce. If the media is affordable (and it works as promised), they have a chance to wipe the floor with the entire industry!

Mind, the problem with this media, no matter who much of a data hoarder you are (like me), you'll find ways to fill it. But if the media is reliable enough, I wonder what backup solutions coming out of this?

Re:Here's hoping

[pla]

Mind, the problem with this media, no matter who much of a data hoarder you are (like me), you'll find ways to fill it.

Hmm, I don't know about that. Personally, I keep everything that hits my PC, and it adds up, but still hasn't come close to 2TB...

About every two years I replace my fileserver's smallest HDD with one roughly twice as large as the current largest (so I basically append a zero to the right end of the current size, expressed in binary). Currently that means almost a third of a terabyte after an upgrade this spring.

This time, I've started keeping my CD rips in a lossless format. Next time (which will put me around 0.75TB) I will probably start keeping raw DVD rips. After that, I don't know what else I might keep that could use so much room. Until now, audio and small video clips have taken the bulk of the space.

Although I know everyone who has ever said this has later eaten their words, at the moment, I really don't think any home computer needs more than a few TB of storage.


But if the media is reliable enough, I wonder what backup solutions coming out of this?

Ah, great point. That currently seems like the biggest problem we have with storage - Not the actual online storage, but the ability to keep up-to-date backups. I've worked for the past few weeks to backup my fileserver to DVD, and still have a few more discs to go. Most likely, at least a few of the over-50 DVDs I've created have errors, and in the event my FS fries, I would almost certainly lose something. Even Blu-Ray doesn't look like that great of an alternative... 25GB doesn't suck, but it still means five discs per 100GB. After my next HDD addition, that will come out to around 30 discs, almost the same situation I have now (Yes, Blu-Ray theoretically holds a lot more, up to 100GB for dual-sided dual-layer. But keep in mind that DSDL DVDs hold almost 20GB, and we've just now started seeing SSDL burners, with media incredibly scarce and expensive).

So what do we need? A solution for making backups of several hundred GB at a time, that doesn't cost more than buying a similarly-sized IDE drive and keeping it off-site (ie, tape backups, not even counting the cost of the drive itself).

Re:Here's hoping

[marcansoft]

This time, I've started keeping my CD rips in a lossless format. Next time (which will put me around 0.75TB) I will probably start keeping raw DVD rips. After that, I don't know what else I might keep that could use so much room. Until now, audio and small video clips have taken the bulk of the space.

How about raw RGB video rips from scanned cinema tapes? Plus raw 48khz 24bit whatever number of channels audio of course.

Seriously though, my previous HD was a Seagate 40GB 7200RPM. Clicked to death one day (yes, i've learned the lesson, MAKE BACKUPS). I had Windows 2000 (10GB), Linux(10GB (/)+10GB(/home)+whatever swap), stuff (14GB FAT32). Now I have a 120GB drive and I've got it more than half filled already, without having Win2k (all linux now). You'll always end up filling all your space, want it or not.

Re:Here's hoping

[surprise_audit]

I've started keeping my CD rips in a lossless format. Next time (which will put me around 0.75TB) I will probably start keeping raw DVD rips.

But, of course, you've still got the original discs, right?? So you don't really need to be backing those up. Granted, it would be a PITA to re-rip them all, but you wouldn't have lost anything. And as a last resort, there's all those backups the MPAA/RIAA have so thoughtfully made and distributed around the country for you...

Re:Here's hoping

[NanoGator]

"Hmm, I don't know about that. Personally, I keep everything that hits my PC, and it adds up, but still hasn't come close to 2TB..."

Two words: HD Porn.

I doubt I'm speaking for just myself here. ;)

Re:Here's hoping

[elandal]

This time, I've started keeping my CD rips in a lossless format. Next time (which will put me around 0.75TB) I will probably start keeping raw DVD rips. After that, I don't know what else I might keep that could use so much room. Until now, audio and small video clips have taken the bulk of the space.

At about 300MB per CD, I can fit my collection to below 100GB. And it grows slowly enough that HD sizes will easily keep up.
But, my DVD collection would already take some 5TB - more than three times my current total diskspace. It'll take 2-3 years before HD sizes grow faster than my DVD collection does, and then some more before I have enough that I can keep them all on disks.

Of course in the 5-10 years it takes for my diskspace to grow beyond my dvd collection (the amount of other data at that point would be somewhere between a rounding error and a hot spare), I'll have some HD-DVD / Bluray / verylargecapacityopticaldisc format videos already, and I yet again think it'll be just some 2-5 years for disk capacity to grow to that size..

Although I know everyone who has ever said this has later eaten their words, at the moment, I really don't think any home computer needs more than a few TB of storage.

Yup. As noted, I'd already need a few TBs to keep my non-hollywood (well, maybe 1-2% Hollywood afterall) commercial video entertainment material on a "Home Entertainment System". And the need for space will grow in the future - I can see it up to at least 100TB with just next gen HD video. And when we're there, there's bound to be something even larger that I want to keep online.

Re:Here's hoping

[Zakabog]

I do pretty much the same thing you do except it's not every 2 years, it's about twice a year. I have a bit over a TB of storage with only 180 gigs free, I have a "FTP" site sort of. Well if it was a site, it would be VERY popular, except for my upstream. I keep all kinds of FTP related stuff on it, a ton of MP3s, a bunch of episodes of my favorite shows (well cartoon shows, I don't download x-files episodes or anything.) A lot of ISOs, all kinds of stuff, and it always fills up my drive. And if it doesn't, the drive gets filled up with full installs of games like Doom 3 (which surprisingly takes up very little space compared to most other games) far cry, UT2K4, all these games are over 1.5 gigs with like UT2K4 currently taking up about 6 or so. I guess it also depends on how often you clean up your data since I never really want to I just keep buying more space when I run out.

Read/Write

[rf0]

You have to wonder how many times you can read/write this format. Is it like CF where you have a limited number of more like a hard disk where you can use it form main storage. If the latter mass backup storage suddenly becomes very easy..

Rus

Re:Read/Write

[Short Circuit]

Hard drives keep a certain percentage of their sectors available in case other sectors go bad. (They re-map the bad sector to a hidden good one. I don't see why any read/writable media of sufficient size couldn't do the same.

But, as others have mentioned, it's only a format, not a device. I doubt they'd build read-write count limitations into the format. (Though I could picture keeping usage failure statistics to make predictions on when other sectors will fail.)

Re:Read/Write

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical flash parts these days are rated for 100,000 or a million erase cycles. Some of the really cheap parts intended only for program storage are rated for 10,000. A quick google scan indicates a lot of CF vendors quote 1M+.

Even at 100,000 erase cycles, and assuming you erase and rewrite the entire card, you could back up your hard drive every hour for ten years straight before wearing out the flash.

Yes, you have a "limited" number of times you can erase a flash -- but it's not much of a limit in practice. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Hmm

[ColourlessGreenIdeas]

It looks like it's a new interface which is capable of supporting 2TB, but fitting 2TB of data onto a device the size of a MMC card is a problem that each manufacturer needs to solve, and they'll solve it when Moore's law says they'll solve it. So this isn't actually exciting; they've just made the address field longer.
It does mean that devices using this standard SHOULD support cards way larger than existed at the time the device was made. But based on my experience with almost every format of storage I've ever used, this won't work in practice.

Memory card FORMAT

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a new memory card FORMAT, not a new card. It's like saying hard drive manufacturers are making 256TB drives because they use the 48-bit LBA standard. If this standard is implemented correctly, you'll be able to purchase a uCard MP3 player next year and a 12GB uCard 6 years later, and have that card work in the MP3 player.

The End is near...

[ryane67]

Don't you guys know what will happen?!?! If a memory card in a small enough form factor reaches 2TB, the universe will implode on itself! That's just too small for that much data!

Re:The End is near...

[goneutt]

Your right, every card is really a small black whole. The only problem is that you have to wait until the rest of the universe to die of entrophy for the read time.

Re:The End is near...

[Anonymous Coward]

entropy...

Just a new format

[tji]

From The Register article, it sounds like it's just a new format definition. The 2TB size would just be the addressing limit. Also, the claim a 120MB/s xfer rate.. which, like ATA133, represents the upper limit - not any real xfer rate.

So, it's basically an updated format specification with no (current) practical limits.

Re:Just a new format

[carlmenezes]

lol....so they've basically invented SFF-ATA-120 ;)

*ducks* ;)

Re:Just a new format

[mgcarley]

While 120MB/s might be the upper limit, with solid state media, it's more likely that the average sustained transfer rate is going to be close to that upper limit.

As opposed to hard disks and all their micromechanics, where you would be pretty lucky to sustain 80% of their upper limits...

Nice size, but

[grunt107]

storage devices that large should have a multi-parallel division of storage.

Although 2TB is tremendous, at the 120MB/sec, it would be about 5 hrs to access the entire contents (while rare, a card-card transfer to save data might be performed).

Re:Nice size, but

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Although 2TB is tremendous, at the 120MB/sec, it would be about 5 hrs to access the entire contents (while rare, a card-card transfer to save data might be performed).

Rare?!? How about every time I bring my digicam home from vacation and copy my 2TB of pictures to my hard drive?
My 200GB Hard drive.
Hrrrmmmmm

--

XD picture card promise ...

[adzoox]

Fuji/Olympus promised by the end of 2004, we'd have 1GB XD cards and assured their buyers that they wouldn't be abandoned by the format [in terms of space], like they were with smartmedia cards. A 4GB was promised by summer 2005. It looks like neither will materialize.

Who would pick up this format? It seems Fuji/Olympus would be their only buyers on the digital camera market. I suppose this will be aimed more at Mp3 players and possibly computers/laptops/PDAs, if it's fast enough.

Concerning XD cards - if anyone is interested - I'm trying a mod project for smartmedia cards - see my journal

Not the only one

[spiffturk]

According to the second link in the article (this one), Sony is coming out with 2TB storage as well in their memory stick format.

--
Will

Wow...

[canicus]

and I still just burn my own custom CD's...

N-k

[epine]

Price range?
Temperature range?
Storage lifetime?
Erase speed?
Write speed?
Write cycle (wear) lifetime?
Bit error rate?
Power consumption?
Radiation decay?

Let's suppose this thing requires JFFS for wear leveling purposes. Mount time at this capacity range: approximately one year.

We have someone in our office here, who goes by the wholy inappropriate title "VP of Research and Development" who is *constantly* finding new technologies we should exploit, based on N-k impressive paramters.

In any case, if these ucards pan out, ucard over carrier pigeon would probably put Iridium out of business once and for all. Now if someone could breed a homesick Albatross we could stop laying all this expensive fiber optic cable as well.

Nice for my Digital Camera!

[AwesomeJT]

Very nice until I read the fine print. Too bad there are a lot of technologies that haven't reached their theoretical limits yet. I guess the marketeers will start us off at 10 G and move up from there each year until getting to 100 G at which time another format will obsolete this one -- which seems to be the story of my favorite CF card technology (now that 1G CF cards are somewhat affordable, I can't find many cameras to accept it now). Oh well. I guess yet another memory card to confuse things.

Still not enough space...

[Anonymous Coward]

For my porn collection.

Obligatory Armageddon Paraphrase

[Zorilla]

"Russian memory cards, American memory cards, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!!"

Re:Obligatory Armageddon Paraphrase

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, it is never obligatory to quote or otherwise paraphrase Armageddon. On the contrary, it may in fact be obligatory to actively suppress such a quote when one comes to mind.

I'll believe it when I see it

[foidulus]

(I'm talking about the card itself, not the 2TB, as the headline is misleading), this sounds like an attempt to get around having to pay foriegn firms a licensing fee, much like EDVD, which is not used outside China. I will believe this when I see it, till then I'll remain skeptical. It could just be used as a way to leverage a lower licensing fee from SD cards.

Its like fox news twisting but worse

[t_allardyce]

Nice wording in the post, it should say a new card format with up to 2TB storage. Backwards compatability is always good but i cant help thinking 2TB addressing is not gonna be enough. Can this be used as a multi-purpose card? Things like PDAs and phones really need a couple of slots that can be used to plug in memory, wireless cards and other things and it needs to be a single standard - something like USB in a long card-shaped socket?

Latency

[ColourlessGreenIdeas]

You have some serious latency challenges to solve before I use your homesick albatross for online gaming.

Re:Latency

[BJH]

That's where the X-Prize comes in - rocket-powered homesick albatrosses.

XD picture card - here's what's wrong with it

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, yes it's smaller than SD/MMC. But geeze, THAT was already small enough (*especially* for digital cameras! My Canon uses CompactFlash for crying out loud!) So why did they create yet ANOTHER damn memory card format?

Second, they made the dumbess thing you can in the digital world: impose artificial limits on the format. Have you SEEN XD cards on sale? There's two kinds: standard and widescreen (or something like that). No, I'm not making this up: you need the right XD card to take pictures in a given ratio.

Talk about taking your consumers for morons!

Re:XD picture card - here's what's wrong with it

[Fweeky]

Eh, widescreen? Olympus enable panorama mode in their cameras if you use an Olympus xD card; that's about it afaik.

Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[goneutt]

Since it takes a couple transistors to make a logic circuit there will be several times as many transistors as bytes, possibly a minimum of 6-8 trillion transistors. At present the microprocessor lines are at around 42 million transitors, and doubled every year(moore's law is exponential) it might be 10+ years to be able to put that many transistors on a chip, but by then the chip will have to larger than the proposed standard. Other wise you'll need to use smaller parts, and I think in the space allowed you're looking at transistors smaller than the electron orbit around hydrogen. Just because you can adress a certain amount or memory doesn't mean you can make the memory to use it.

Re:Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[Johan Veenstra]

Multiply by 8, since each BIT requires several transisters. There are 16 trillion bits in 2 TB.

Re:Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[deadlysloth]

Yea, by my numbers, youhave 2^41 bits within 768*10^12 square nanometers. Assuming that its a planer technology, i.e. they dont stack bits on top of eachother, each bit cell is smaller than 0.0029 sqaure *nm*. Which is about the size of one atom.

Now, I'm giving them lots of credit, they are filling the entire interior with bits, no room for packaging and no room for drivers/decoders/internal logic.

I call bullshit :-)

Re:Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit :-)

Just in the Slashdot headline. If you RTFA, the thing is capable of addressing 2TB. It says nothing about actually putting that much memory on it.

Re:Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[deadlysloth]

I RTFA, whats the point in making it capable of addressing 2TB is its not physically possible to stuff 2TB of bits into the space taken up by the card??

Re:Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[Fweeky]

Because one day maybe they will stack multiple layers on a card. Maybe they'll come up with a larger form-factor (like CF Type 2 as used by microdrives), or maybe they'll turn into endpoints for access to remote storage (in which case 2TB suddenly looks rather small; I've got 1/4 that in my desktop already).

Re:Hmmm, must be using really small atoms

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they'll store multiple bits per atom. After all, an atom has more than one quantum state... Or maybe they'll use photons for storage. Photons don't need to be physically separated, they can overlap each other in space. And if string theory is validated, and turns out to have actual engineering applicability, even 2TB could be insufficient addressability...

Interesting Prospects

[Thedalek]

This does offer intriguing possibilities, although the form factor just begs to be mounted on a credit-card sized carrier. Yeah, I know, SD & SmartMedia don't need to be any bigger physically, so why does this?

Well, if it does reach the aforementioned 2TB limit, and if it's reasonably inexpensive, these things would replace DVDs in a fairly short order. At 2TB, you can have as high definition video as you can handle, bitrates be darned. Season box sets of your favorite show getting bulky? A 2TB card can hold over 225 DVDs (DVD9s that is) of data.

Of course, insane levels of data storage breed insane levels of piracy. Sure, at 120MB/s, it would take about 5 hours to fill one of these suckers, but that's time well spent when you can carry your entire game collection in your wallet.

"Trade you every Nintendo 64 game ever made for every PSone game ever made."

"Throw in every SNES game ever made, and you've got a deal!"

Sure, the 2TB thing may be a pipedream for now, but it's a pipedream I'm willing to indulge...

How bout some RAID here

[mulvane]

I really don't care about initial size. What would be nice if if you could stick say 4 of these in even an ATA raid you could expect massive perfomance gains that would go increase on the next faster interface up to SCSI320. With a 4 drive setup you could have a RAID5 for fault tolerance and failure and it would be so speedy in transfers that you wouldn't even notice. This would apply to software raid, and or hardware. Give me 4 200GB versions of these and I would be happy cause its not always siz that matters. A single 2TB drive with no data redundancy would honestly just plain scare me anyway.

Re:How bout some RAID here

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this? If, eventually (and I'm skeptical) there is 2TB of storage on one of these cards, why not have RAID onboard?

Take 2TB and divide it into two pieces, each 1TB. Mirror it internally. (Striping or RAID 5 doesn't make sense because the data will have to use the same port/bus/connector to leave the card). Have a little red LED on the tip of the card that glows when one of the components fails, so you know to copy your data off.

Then you get 1TB of mirrored storage in a tiny package.

DNF?

[nanoakron]

Is that the one that comes pre-loaded with Duke Nukem : Forever?

-Nano.

Wait a minute....

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There are already something like SIX memory card formats, and these guys want to start ANOTHER one!?

No thanks! I like to have an absolute minimum of formats. Smart Media is legacy. Sony's and Fuji's are kind of proprietary and uneccessary IMO. The only two relevant formats are CF and SD, in my opinion.

I stick with CF just so I have all my devices accept all my CF devices. Sure, it is the biggest, but it is also the most flexible, most affordable, and I really don't think the size is too bad. I'd accept SD for maybe watches and phones, but nothing larger.

Re:Wait a minute....

[bstone]

The only two relevant formats are CF and SD, in my opinion.

This appears to be just a standards upgrade to the MMC format. Same size card, faster maximum speed and wider address. Since MMC is a one-bit interface, it looks like this just changes the standard to a 16-bit interface (120MB vs. 2.5MB/s), and changes the address to a 512-byte block address rather than a single byte address (2TB vs 4GB).

There's already a "High speed MMC" that appears to have an 8-bit interface, this is just an incremental change to keep up with the other players and keep the MMC standard (and probably related patents and licensing) competative in the marketplace.

AFAICT, "High speed MMC" didn't really set the world on fire, so they need some other way to break you of your CF habit.

These announcements happen all the time

[JBMcB]

Companies come out with these crazy new products at trade shows all the time. Usually it's way overpriced and in very limited quantities. They are looking for investment capital to further develop the technology. Sometimes it works out (Archos), sometimes it doesn't (Indrema).

I used to get Nasa Tech Briefs, a magazine full of new technologies Nasa has developed available for commercial licensing. From the time Nasa developed a new technology to the time it comes out for commercial use is about 10 years. I'm sure the same is true for many technologies.

2 TB memory card

[Esion Modnar]

What they didn't say: it's about 4 feet long and weighs 300 pounds.

Re:2 TB memory card

[nmg196]

Yes they did - they specified the exact size in mm. They also never said that it was a 2TB memory card.

Dupe?

[bolix]

I submitted this on Friday?

Is it still breaking geek "news"?

FibreChannel

[bhima]

I'd settle for a FibreChannel to 4 or 8 port SATA bridge board, by itself.

So I didn't have to spring for all "enterprise" options that vendors are so proud of.

"Third world dictatorship"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taiwan is no "third world dictatorship" - it is, for good or for bad, one of the remaining strongholds of democracy in the Asia Pac region. Hong Kong's looks pretty bleak to me.

Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about. Never mind the fact that most likely the memory card's "2 terabyte" storage is only a theoretical maximum.

Obligatory pr0n comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

2TB of pr0n on a memory card.

Uh-oh.

[Asprin]

Dense portable storage sounds neat, but I think the form-factor needs to be reconsidered -- what if you lost it? All of your hard drives, CDs and DVDs would be gone in a flash! What's the bandwidth of a 2TB flash card slipping between the bars of a sewer drain and floating out to the waste treatment plant? Maybe they should call it a *flush* card? (Sorry -- bad pun.)

Re:Uh-oh.

[nmk]

Hmm, I have an ingenious solution for that. Don't take it out of your intended device. Just because a particular form factor allows for portability doesn't mean you have to use it that way. This is like saying hot swappable hard drives are bad, because what if I loose one.

hmmm...

[Polkyb]

Imagine a RAID array of these babies... Attached to my Beowulf cluster...

:-)

Re:hmmm...

[TeknoHog]

Imagine a RAID array of these babies...

I was going to say something witty along the lines of IC circuits and GPS systems. But then recalled what the 'R' in 'RAID array' stands for.

New iPod (or cell phone) in 2005?

[xylix]

I can't be the only one that immediately thought "iPod" when I read this news. Now if there can be another breakthough in battery technology to make my iPod last longer / not slowly die out, I would be a very happy camper.

Yeah 2 TB would be excessive for music. But I am more interested in the tiny size than the massive storage. (Seriously, I can't imagine needing a terabyte ... but then I once thought 1 GB was an impossibly large amount of memory space. HAH! Wonder what comes after tera ...)

With 2 TB I could have all my CDs (somewhere around 400 - 500) copied in Aiff format for better quality. With a 2 TB iPod I could keep my entire home folder backed up to take with me from home, to work, on vacation... wherever. I personally can't see the point of incorporating video into an iPod ... but with 2 TB you could throw it in as an extra.

But then, on second thought, if you could shoe-horn one of these into a cell phone equiped with the iPod software I could have one less device to carry with me.

Re:New iPod (or cell phone) in 2005?

[Fweeky]

"Wonder what comes after tera"

Prefix from FOLDOC.

Please read your own post

[gosand]

Please read your own post:

Nothing to see here, are you insane. Depending on what the price of the card is, this could potentially replace hard drives in many applications. If its cheap enough, perhaps even in Laptops. Its transfer speed is fast enough to replace a hard drive, plus, being solid state, it won't develop mechanical problems. It'll take up substantially less space and consume less power. In this age of miniaturization, and subsequent problems with power consumption and heat output, it seems a great solution.

Perhaps there is nothing to see here, you might want to move along. Is that better?

what would you need that much data for

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, i can only think of government interests in developing a memory with such a density to store OUR personal data god knows by what... if its small enough all kind of stuff could start gathering info about users to store in there with room enough for LOTS of data that could be used for... what? paranoia.com lives on!

Big ups to KevTX wherever you are man!

Re:Kewl stuff.

[A55M0NKEY]

The following is my wishlist for future computerish hardware:

• Reliable, hellafast, terabyte solid state memory that uses very little juice.
• High bandwidth wireless internet access in every 'civilized' place on earth. At least 56k wireless even in the boonies, or out in the woods.
• • Functionality of today's laptops packed into extremely small cell phone. I want to have a 'cell phone like' item that I use every day for ALL my computing and communication needs. It can also be my TiVo as long as I can use it for other things at the same time I am watching TV with it. ( It would be nice to carry pre-recorded shows with you so you can watch them wherever you are )
  • The cell-phone/computer would project 21 inches or greater onto any surface useably. A special, optional 'silver screen' that could be rolled up and carried with you would make long term use 'easy on the eyes'. But I want to be able to read my email projected onto a wall, or whatever I have handy. If brightness in a well lit room makes this scheme impossible at times, light flat LCD screens that OPTIONALLY plug into the phone could be a solution, but full size screen on the go is a neccessity for maximal utility.
    
  • Full size keyboard projected on a desk or flat surface that you can type on. What ever happened to this great idea? Didn't it work?

I want to set my cell phone up on a tripod, the screen projected on the wall in front of me, and the keyboard, made of light, projected on the table, and type my email. I want to save it, and carry it with me in my pocket. I don't want to ever type numbers three times to make a letter, and I never want to deal with a 1 1/2" x 2" lcd screen for anything complicated. A black and white one is fine. If you need to put color on a tiny lcd screen, then you are using it for way too much. Really, a tiny screen on the phone itself is completely optional. The 21 inch bright, high resolution projection system and full sized projected keyboard are not optional.

Disclaimer: I don't own a cell phone, a PDA, a laptop, or a TiVo. But such a device as described above would bring me into 21st century if it were cheap cheap cheap.

Your ideas intrigue me,

[yet another coward]

and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter or IPO.

oh yeah?

[MasTRE]

I didn't realize it was April 1st. Or has /. completely lost it?

Density

[cazzazullu]

A quick calculation of the density, with the assumptions:

1. all of the cards volume is used in the same way, to store data
2. the card actually holds 2 terabytes of data, not just 2 TB adressing
3. They can design and built 3D circuits and chips, not just layered 2D-chips as most others use

results in a byte-density of approx. 38 gigabytes per cubic millimeter. To accomplish this you will need to fit the circuitry and electrical components needed to store 300 bits in a cubic micrometer!
This is A LOT and doesn't seem realistic to me, at least not for the near future.

Re:first post?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes! yes it is!!!

PS3 and XBox 2 Implications Perhaps?

[blueZhift]

Even if initial storage densities do not allow a 2TB storage device in the first versions of the new format, 5 and 10GB devices could find a home in the next generation of games consoles. There's already been much talk of how the next XBox may not include a hard drive. Sony's plans on mass storage for the PS3 are less clear. But both of these consoles could make use of multigigabyte versions of the new memory card assuming their other specs are compatible with the console design goals.

Granted, no one knows what these cards are going to cost and if the cost is too high, that could take them out of contention. But, it seemed clear that one reason Microsoft may be reluctant to include a hard drive in the next XBox is to keep the size of the console as small as possible. The current XBox has been roundly criticized as being too big. And its large size is seen as part of its problem in the Japanese market in particular (and a lack of games there). Sony is also keenly aware of the need to build a compact console with as few moving parts as possible.

Even if these new memory cards find their way into the next generation of consoles, this could take a couple of different forms. They can either include them as an integrated device that comes with every box. Or they could base new removable memory cards on this format thereby shifting the cost to the consumer. The second strategy keeps the cost of the console down, but could backfire if the cards cost more than $50 and also complicates life for game developers. So a lot is going to depend on the price that the new technology is introduced at.

Almost big enough...

[pandrijeczko]

...for Windows XP Service Pack 2.

It ain't Lakota

[Doc Ruby]

What exactly is a miniSD card?

More important ...

[Macka]

That currently seems like the biggest problem we have with storage - Not the actual online storage, but the ability to keep up-to-date backups. I've worked for the past few weeks to backup my fileserver to DVD

... than the time taken to backup data, is the time it takes to restore it in the event of a disaster. I've come across a few clients over the years who's business would suffer a lot of financial damage if their systems were down for more than 2-3 days. And they just hadn't thought about this at all.

Re:More important ...

[Rich0]

A well run enterprise with good supplier agreements could get a server back up and running in that timeframe with just a backup on something fairly modern (tape most likely, or remote SAN).

A small busniess that needs to be up in 2-3 days max would probably need redundant hardware, with frequent replication.

Big businesses that need much faster turnarounds would probably have backup datacenters. They might not be full scale to save money (so they might have diminished user capacity for a few days).

If a company really can't handle a week of downtime, then they need to have a serious disaster plan, with documented procedures to get new servers up and running and backups restored. They then need to test the whole thing out to make sure they didn't miss something. It is expensive, but if they're willing to bet the bank on it working untested that's the company's call.

MOD PARENT UP n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

siokaos

what they really meant was 2GB..

[airbie]

2TB??? Sounds like someone could have gotten the translation between Tiawanese and English wrong. They probably meant 2GB instead of 2TB. 2GB is still worthy of publication, but more within reason and possiblibity than 2TB.

A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Simonetta]

plus, being solid state, it won't develop mechanical problems. It'll take up substantially less space and consume less power.

You're most likely right about the issue of mechanical problems. However I'm not sure about the power issues. Hard disks use lots of power only when they are starting to spin. At idle or full speed they use little power.

Dynamic RAM memory, on the other hand, has to be constantly refreshed which means it has power running to it at all times to scan addresses. There has to be uninterrupted power to drive the RAM bank, the DRAM controller, the hot-plug interface to the PC, and the regulated power supply for the unit. This might be a significant percentage of the power that would be used in total by a low-energy magnetic storage device like a hard disk.

It's also time to start considering the possibility that Taiwan will possibly be invaded and occupied by the Communists from the mainland at some point within the next five years. This will, if it happens, disrupt manufacturing design and shipping for years to come.
If I were an American politician, I would suggest to the US State department that the USA would only guarantee to provide an efficient co-defense of Taiwan if Taiwan relocates a significant number of IC fabs and design centers to the USA employing primarily American workers. This is the way that the world works. They would surely understand. They wouldn't like it, but they would comply.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Mr. Hankey]

You're assuming that it's using DRAM. If this were the case, it would either be a volatile card or would require a battery to maintain data. Since it's going to sit in the same MMC form factor and is being compared against SD memory cards, both are highly unlikely. It's probably flash or something like it, which consumes relatively little power when compared to an operating hard drive. I'll believe the 2TB capacity in this form factor when I see it though. That's probably a few years away.

As for Taiwan handing everything over to the US, due to the possibility of being invaded... If I were in Taiwan I'd want as much assistance from the rest of the world as possible. This course of action reads too much like a last will and testament, and I have my doubts that they're interested in giving up just yet. We also couldn't manufacture things as cheaply as they do in Taiwan, since our costs are greater. If they did move their fabs and design centers here, they'd probably get outsourced to India et al for this reason.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[phsdv]

...relocates a significant number of IC fabs and design centers to the USA employing primarily American workers...

It is a free world, at least should be in your part of the world, and many people are fighting for it to keep it that way. So why are you not starting a foundry bussiness your self? If you think you can make and a better fab by hiring more Amercians, please go ahead. As far as I know the world works the way that the best and most cost effective manufacturer will win (this is where I am fighting daily, and I am not located in Taiwan). And if it is that important/strategic for your economy I bet you would be able to get a few hunderd million dollars from your government to support this.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Idarubicin]

It's also time to start considering the possibility that Taiwan will possibly be invaded and occupied by the Communists from the mainland at some point within the next five years. This will, if it happens, disrupt manufacturing design and shipping for years to come.

Why would it disrupt manufacturing, design, and shipping for years to come?

There would just be some fast footwork in the Senate, a Presidential edict or two, some bafflegab from the State Department, a treaty-signing photo-op, and suddenly buying all that hardware from the Chinese government is nice and legal. What do you think Silicon Valley is paying all those lobbyists for?

You weren't thinking there would be trade sanctions against China--even if they invade Taiwan--were you? They'd have to invade California before the US government would upset that many multinationals.

If I were an American politician, I would suggest to the US State department that the USA would only guarantee to provide an efficient co-defense of Taiwan if Taiwan relocates a significant number of IC fabs and design centers to the USA employing primarily American workers.

And why would the Taiwanese choose to do that? If they move their important infrastructure to the United States, that reduces to zero the already-tenuous incentive for the United States to provide any defense at all...

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[chris_mahan]

Yeah except that a hostile takeover by the prc would leave taiwain in ruins, and all the smart one would have GTFU (got the freak out) a couple weeks before

Plus, the chinese would pull a Mao on the remaining Taiwanese and there'd be casualties in the millions.

This, by the way, would mark the beginning of the end for china. The US and the rest of the world would boycott the living daylights out of them, and after we have killed 10 million prc troops with our advanced technology, sank 90% of all prc ships, and wiped their airforce out, they'd have a hard time containing the internal backlash. Which means they would have to crack down internally and block foreign media. This would bring back the good old days of communistic-nationalism.

They will not invade taiwan, because they can't.

And they know it. The only way they can get it back is too cozy up with us and lull us into giving it back to them.

Of course, they don't realize what tenatious little bastards we are.

The other problem is that if they try and fail, Taiwan will declare independance and there is nothing anyone in PRC will be able to say.

And they know that too.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Idarubicin]

...Which all boils down to the same conclusion that I reached in the grandparent post, albeit for very different reasons and by very different means: Taiwanese fab plants have no sensible reason to move to the United States.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Uber Banker]

The US and the rest of the world would boycott the living daylights out of them, and after we have killed 10 million prc troops with our advanced technology, sank 90% of all prc ships, and wiped their airforce out, they'd have a hard time containing the internal backlash.

Notice how there are so many intelligent, dillegent, hardworking Chinese babes and dudes moving into high positions over the past 20 years? And how China reorganised it's domestic and foreign policy to open to world trade/policy 20 years ago? This is no co-incidence! These Chinese in powerful businesses the world over are infact SPIES AND AGENTS. They either came over in their youth, assigned from the PRC and underground agents in what was British Hong Kong, or their parents and grandparents were communist sleepers waiting for the signal.

Be afraid, Chinese agents already control key positions in multinational companies, including the bulk of technology companies, and the US government. If America ever acts aggressively towards China these agents will pull out the knives and use their Kung Fu skills to kill all top US officials, thus claiming the US for China.

You have been warned. I recommend heading into the hills, building a nice bunker and stockpiling a few beans and guns.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Anonymous Coward]

As a chinese American I've heard enough crap from idiots who just take the crap that the media spinners have to say, take it to heart, and are convinced that China is the big bad communist government and how Mao is gonna end up jumping out of his lil glass box and take over the world.

It's not like I like communism. The reason my family moved to the states was because of communist persecution.

But if you're upset that chinese workers are taking your jobs cuz you're a lazy inefficient ass
the last thing you should do is become a foreign affairs expert.

First off, the current presidential administration doesn't recognize Taiwan as a soverign country. They believe in the one china policy. Second, there are polls in taiwan where the populace is fine with the status quo. It's just the politicians in taiwan who use the idea of independence to get media attention. Third, I'm sure the US would be antsy if Rhode Island decided to secede because of an oppressive government. And with the way Ashcroft has been running things, it just doesn't seem all that unlikely.

Seriously, if you're gonna start talking about foreign affairs, it wouldn't help to learn something before spouting your idiot ideas off. /end rant

As for the initial memory density, it's probably gonna be in the area of 128MB and up. That same site cited that Memory Stick Pro has a capacity of
2TB, but I have yet to see any past the 1GB capacity.

So yea. Mod me down or whatever.

Re:A terabyte memory card uses a LOT of power

[Simonetta]

As a chinese American I've heard enough crap from idiots who just take the crap that the media spinners have to say, take it to heart, and are convinced that China is the big bad communist government and how Mao is gonna end up jumping out of his lil glass box and take over the world.


We European-Americans have learned to take what the Other-Americans say seriously. The Taiwan situation seems serious. Everybody would be happy to have the status-quo continue, everybody that is except the people who put Mao in the glass box. The only real question is how many Americans (Chinese,Euro, and Other) are going to die when the Maoists invade Taiwan.

...I'm sure the US would be antsy if Rhode Island decided to secede because of an oppressive government.

I'm from Rhode Island. They have an oppressive government. The rest of the country has been trying to convince them to secede for many years now. We're sick of all their BS: they embarass us. Most of us would be happy to see them go their own way. They can join the EU for all we care. Good Riddance to Rhode Island. Rhode Island is America's Gaza. Pweeuu!

First Nano RAM?

[KrackHouse]

There is a slim chance that this could be the first nanotech RAM product. Any wagers?

Re:First Nano RAM?

[Guy Harris]

There is a slim chance that this could be the first nanotech RAM product. Any wagers?

Yeah, I'll bet USD 5000 that it's not; see several postings indicating that the 2TB is the maximum capacity to be supported by the specification for the cards - I've seen nothing in the article saying that they will have 2TB cards in 2005.

It had better be available for 2006

[Epeeist]

Otherwise nobody is going to have enough memory to run Longhorn.

Don't be fooled again.

[tuxlove]

Notice how the article says "up to 2TB"? That doesn't mean they will be releasing 2TB cards any time soon. What it most likely means is that the hardware design supports up to 2TB of *addressing*. A 2TB memory card that size would be nothing short of earth shattering, and wouldn't be relegated to a 3-paragraph article on single website.

This is NOT a 2 terabyte memory card!

[b1t r0t]

RTFA:

Dubbed 'ucard', the format will support up to 2TB of storage capacity within a 3.2 x 2.4 x 0.1cm card - the same size as a standard MMC unit. The new cards are said to be connector-compatible with the older format.

It's a 2 terabyte maximum, not a 2 terabyte card.

Re:This is NOT a 2 terabyte memory card!

[0x0d0a]

Just to be a bit more clear, this means that the 2TB limit probably has nothing to do at all with the physical limitations on the card, and is simply an addressing limitation (i.e. you can only address bytes up to 2TB, as the designers suspected that it was certain that nobody could ever manage to design a card with this form factor that addresses more than 2TB).

If it sounds too good to be true....

[retro128]

It probably is. The article is too short on details and too long on claims. The biggest memory card I've heard of is 2GB IIRC, and these guys say they're going to have 2TB in the same form factor by October? When the biggest 3.5" HD they have is 512GB? And a 120MBps transfer rate? What's the fastest they can go now? 10? Maybe 20? So what you're telling me is that some company out in Taiwan has replaced Intel's flash technology with something that holds 1,000 times more data in the same physical space. The tech world would ordinarily go apeshit over an advancement of this magnitude, given the clear violation of Moore's Law. And yet this is the first we've heard of it. And instead of rolling out solid state hard disks, or mondo RAID arrays, they are making memory cards for PDA's and digital cameras out of these. And they are going straight to market in October. And they did it all before Intel and IBM, who spends billions on R&D developing this kind of thing.

Repeat after me, everyone.
This.product.is.vaporware.

Re:If it sounds too good to be true....

[Guy Harris]

and these guys say they're going to have 2TB in the same form factor by October?

No, they don't. The DigiTimes article says that the new type of memory card will be unveiled in October, mass production will begin in early 2005, and the maximum capacity of this type of card will be 2TB - nothing about 2TB cards being available in early 2005, much less October 2004.

Think "guaranteed not to exceed 2TB", not "guaranteed to contain 2TB".

Mark "foe" submitters of bullshit stories

[0x0d0a]

I've started marking people that submit obviously deliberately misleading stories "foe". My only regret is that Slashcode doesn't slap a "friend/foe" identifier pill next to the name of story submitters in stories.

Interface announcement, not memory card

[mnemotronic]

It sounds like a announcement of a new peripheral interface, not necessarily a memory card product announcement. And 2 tb in a memory card? Let's see .... with 1 gb SD memory cards going for $270, that 2tb card would only set me back a cool half $mil. Great! I'll take two.

Finally

[disbaldman]

Finally a storage medium capable of storing a decent quality photo of my wanker!

10 Terabyte to 10 Petabyte and Beyond Holographics

[fedrive]

Research is active at 3 universities. http://www.nanonewsnet.com/index.php?module=pagese tter&func=viewpub&tid=4&pid=5

Linus borrows w/o attribuation.

[Anonymous Coward]

outside of the Linus quote "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from"?

That 'quote' is borrowed. It was said about the implementation of RS-232.

But don't let that stop you think that Linus is the font of all knowledge.

Re:Kewl stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to set my cell phone up on a tripod, the screen projected on the wall in front of me

What was that you said about very little juice?

OK, I've read the DigiTimes.com page closely...

[constantnormal]

... and while it would very likely require a different standard to operate in the advertised manner, it sure seems to me that they pretty clearly state that this will be manufactured in 2005.

And I also see nothing to indicate that it will be a conventional semiconductor product -- so far as I can tell, it might be MRAM. It might even be a quantum dot product, and actually have a shot at hitting 2TB in the not-too-distant future (but that's pretty far out there, if they had managed to overcome all the hurdles to package and access a large array of quantum dots, it would surely merit a splashier PR).

Assuming that it IS just a new media format using today's semconductor technologies, then the only thing new is the transfer rate, as the energy density required to drive (many) trillions of transistors would likely eliminate the need for any secondary illumination -- just run the glow through some plastic light pipes to provide keyboard illumination or display backlighting!

Terabyte postage stamps just ain't gonna happen with today's semiconductor technologies.

Also, with existing technologies, I suspect that a sustained data transfer rate will fall far short of 120MBps -- although I could be wrong, that's effectively gigabit ethernet (theoretical maximum) transfer rate territory, and that works.

Re:OK, I've read the DigiTimes.com page closely...

[Guy Harris]

OK, I've read the digitimes.com page closely, and it says that they will "soon mass produce a new type [emphasis mine] of memory card", but doesn't say that these cards will all have 2TB.

The "Memory cards specifications" table in that article has a "Maximum capacity" column that gives "2TB" for those cards, but it also gives "128GB" as the "Maximum capacity" value for CompactFlash cards; has anybody seen a 128GB CF card?

So I think any speculation on what technology might be used for these cards, based on an assumption that they'll have 2TB in 2005, is premature, as it is not at all clear that they'll have 2TB in 2005, even though the specification for those cards will allow cards of up to 2TB to be constructed (i.e., the spec is intended to allow that format to scale to 2TB if and when the memory technology gets to the point where that can be supported).

Camcorders; PDAs; music players;

[tchdab1]

Eliminate the power-hungry tape drives in camcorders and you have a slimmer, more efficient, better device. If only it would be here in time for xmas.

Put it in a PDA and everything you can carry is potentially an ipod killer.

Re:Kewl stuff.

[A55M0NKEY]

Yeah, I know, it's asking for alot, but that would be the 'total package'. Maybe better batteries are in the cards someday....

Re:Kewl stuff.

[tricorn]

For display, I'd rather have something in a pair of glasses, preferably in true stereo-vision. If it can do HD-resolution or higher, on a virtual 50" screen at an appropriate distance away, that would be just fine with me. Audio from the earpieces from the glasses.

Virtual projected keyboard is fine, but a data glove interface might work well too. Give it tactile feedback, and use the glasses for the keyboard overlay, and you wouldn't even need a flat surface to project it onto. Another input device might be recent developments in picking up sub-vocal nerve impulses. People on a train, sitting back, typing in midair or sub-vocalizing, might become a very common sight.

Now I can carry my porn with me - woohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a happy man. Public restrooms watch out because I'm back with a vengeance.

Price?

[SirLestat]

I hope the price is not around the same price for other flash memory which is a little lower that 50 cents (canadian ... not sure for US). Cause that would make a 2TB card worth over 1 million dollars !

My car's maximum speed is up to 999kph.

[Krylloan]

Because it has a digital speedo with 3 digits before the decimal point.

Re:Kewl stuff.

[A55M0NKEY]

Glasses is a great idea. They are small and can go anywhere. I don't know about a data glove though. Glasses have the advantage of being able to do 3D, and of privacy, but showing stuff to other people would be harder... Maybe the glasses could just watch your hands move with a camera rather than making you wear a glove. If the camera could identify and track your index finger, then it could be your 'mouse'.