SanDisk takes SD to 256 MB
By: Jørgen Sundgot, 06.02.02 14:32
The Secure Digital (SD) expansion format has grown very popular both in Palm OS and Pocket PC devices, and users will soon be able to store 256 MB of data on a single card.
SanDisk has introduced its new 256 MB SD Card, capable of storing approximately up to eight hours of digital music, more than 80 minutes of MPEG-4 video or more than 250 high-resolution digital images. The new card doubles the capacity of SanDisk's highest capacity SD Cards currently shipping at 128 MB.
SanDisk's new 256 MB SD Card offers plenty of storage in a small package
Bo Ericsson, vice president of OEM product marketing at SanDisk, said, "The growing popularity of consumer electronics devices that require considerable storage capacity such as digital video camcorders, digital cameras, handheld computers, audio players and cells phones is expected to fuel the demand for high capacity SD Cards. Indeed, the SD Card is already emerging as a universal mechanism to store and transfer images, video, audio and data between these various platforms."
The SD Card is a flash memory storage device with built-in security functions designed to facilitate the secure exchange of content between devices and the card. It is 32 millimeters (mm) long, 24mm wide and 2.1mm thick, and according to numbers from the SD Association, more than 100 products with slots for the card have been introduced.
The 256MB SanDisk SD Card uses a 1-gigabit (1Gbit, or 1024Megabit) NAND flash memory chip, the next generation of flash memory that effectively doubles the amount of storage capacity in these flash memory cards. It is based on the patented multi-level cell (MLC) technology pioneered by SanDisk that allows two bits of data to be stored in one memory cell, doubling memory capacity.
The commercialization of NAND MLC flash is considered a critical step to expand existing markets and enable new markets for flash memory data storage by not only SanDisk but other manufacturers as well.
SanDisk is currently shipping 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128MB SD cards. The 256MB SanDisk SD Card will be available in the first quarter of 2002 and is expected to sell for approximately $199 USD
AI
