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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.
or even SCSI - it would be nice to replace all my bulky (by comapison) 3 1/2 inch IDE drives.
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
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.
This has got to be wrong.
I'm going to put this down w/ the flying car and Duke Nukem Forever.
--sig fault--
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?
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.
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
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?
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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
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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.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
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.
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!
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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.
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).
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
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
According to the second link in the article (this one), Sony is coming out with 2TB storage as well in their memory stick format.
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Will
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
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.
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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...
For my porn collection.
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?
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You have some serious latency challenges to solve before I use your homesick albatross for online gaming.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
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.
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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.
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.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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.)
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
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.
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?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
-R
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).