Slashdot Mirror
SanDisk Breaks Storage Record With 400GB MicroSD Card (extremetech.com)
SanDisk has managed to cram 400GB into a microSD card, making it the largest microSD card currently on the market. The company said the capacity breakthrough was the result of Western Digital, the company that owns SanDisk, "leveraging its proprietary memory technology and design and production processes that allow for more bits per die." The nitty-gritty details weren't revealed beyond that. ExtremeTech reports: The speed appears to come with a tradeoff. SanDisk trumpets its A1 speed rating, saying: "Rated A1, the SanDisk Ultra microSD card is optimized for apps, delivering faster app launch and performance that provides a better smartphone experience." This is a generous reading of the A1's target performance specification. Last year, the SD Association released a report discussing the App Performance Class memory card specification and why the spec was created in the first place. When Android added support for running applications from an SD card, there was a need to make certain the cards people bought would be quick enough to run apps in the first place. The A1 is rated for 1500 read and 500 write IOPS, with a sequential transfer speed of 10MB/s.
This SanDisk drive should run applications just fine. SanDisk claims it can be used for recording video, not just storing it. But it's not going to be fast enough for 4K data; Class 10 devices are limited to 10MB/s of sequential write performance. Obviously not all phones support shooting in 4K anyway, so whether this is a limitation will depend on what device you plan to plug it into. The 100MB/s speed trumpeted by Western Digital is a reference to read speeds; write speeds are lower and likely closer to the 10MB/s sequential target mentioned above. The microSD card is expected to retail for $250.
This SanDisk drive should run applications just fine. SanDisk claims it can be used for recording video, not just storing it. But it's not going to be fast enough for 4K data; Class 10 devices are limited to 10MB/s of sequential write performance. Obviously not all phones support shooting in 4K anyway, so whether this is a limitation will depend on what device you plan to plug it into. The 100MB/s speed trumpeted by Western Digital is a reference to read speeds; write speeds are lower and likely closer to the 10MB/s sequential target mentioned above. The microSD card is expected to retail for $250.
There's several problems. A lot of "fast" SD cards are really quite slow - they let you write maybe 16MB or so really quickly, then they transfer that to the slower larger flash array. So if you're a photographer, they will start writing really quickly but then it slows down if you're doing a motor-drive shorts. If you're a casual user and snap a photo now and again, the card appears fast.
The problem is large cards can be slower, but people buy them because you need to store large photos and videos and need high sustained transfer rates, and because the files themselves are large, you want the big card so you can store more before swapping.
Sandisk is claiming you can probably use this as your shooting card - it is fast enough for motor drive shots or high end 4K video recording.
Uhm, no...they don't. SD cards do not have an on-card write cache or any magic reason for them to slow down after 16MB.
A CAMERA has a memory buffer to allow burst shots and not lock up while writing to the memory card...and windows will buffer writes as well to external drives/media depending on your configuration.
Larger cards tend to be slower (often bc people go cheap) but there are plenty of large, fast cards as well. Just ask any pro photographer if google is broken.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.