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 ?

[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.

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

[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.

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?

[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.

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.

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 :-)

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).

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.

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.

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

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?