e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[culater33]

1 GB SD card, coming next year
By: Larry Garfield, Wednesday, 09.10.02 18:12 GMT

Panasonic has a 1 GB SD card ready, bringing full-length DivX movies on a handheld a step closer, but it won't be on shelves for another year. Hopefully by then other companies will have them, too, and drive down prices.


Matsushita Electric Industrial, better known for the brand name Panasonic, has announced as Ceatec 2002 that they have developed a Secure Digital card capable of holding 1 gigabyte of data. It also uses a new, faster data bus to move data from the card to a device, capable of up to 20 Mbps.

Current generations of SD card max out at 512 MB, and are speced to run at a maximum of 10 Mbps. Cards smaller than 256 MB run at only 2 Mbps. All of those speeds are limited by the speed of the device to which they are attached, however.

Unfortunately, the new cards won't be appearing on the market for another year, until Matsushita believes that market demand has increased sufficently and production costs decreased sufficently to warrant producing the cards in bulk. Matsushita intends to have 2 GB cards ready in 2004, and then 4 GB versions in 2005, scaling up to 16 GB eventually.

Secure Digital is one of the three major card formats in use on handheld devices, along with Compact Flash and Sony's Memory Stick. Compact Flash cards have been available in capacities up to 1 GB for several months now, though the 1 GB cards currently sell for around $700 USD. Sony Memory Stick cards come in capacities as high as 128 MB, and it appears that Sony will be foregoing larger cards in favor of their encrypted Magic Gate sticks, which include copy prevention systems. As all three use essentially the same flash memory technology, capacities of all three formats should increase in tandem, depending on market demand and corporate interest in developing higher capacities.
http://www.infosync.no/news/2002/n/2423.html
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