Taiwan To Introduce Another Memory Card Format

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20040805A4013.html">http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20040805A4013.html</a>.<br /><br /><i>"Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and some local IT firms will soon mass produce a new type of memory card called “μcard”, which will be unveiled during the Taipei International Electronics Show from October 8-12, according to sources. The new cards are expected to be local IT firms’ chance to reduce technology reliance upon oversea makers, sources commented."</i><br /><br />Yeah, I know, who needs another card, right? But this has some interesting features. The size is roughly the same as an SD card but transfers data at nearly 10 times the rate an SD card can and over 7X the speed a CF card can. It will support IO operations, so think high speed μcard WiFi cards. It also has a theoretical storage capacity of 2TB - which is terabytes. That would be enough to hold almost all of the content of Janak's posts here. :wink: :rotfl:<br /><br />I didn't realize SD cards topped out at 4GB. :cry: The new μcards are expected to be in production in early 2005. For the speed and size increase, I'd go for that over SD.

[SteveHoward999]

yeah but can you nail it to a tree and still recover data?


Two terra bytes!!!!! 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O
:shocked!: :shocked!:



Steve

[dean_shan]

How do you get 2TB when you can't even get a single HD that hold 1TB?

[185driver]

That sounds good, but since a Pocket PC's data transfer rate still lags well behind the capabilities of today's memory cards, PPC users won't benefit as much as they otherwise could. :grumble:

[CoreyJF]

How do you get 2TB when you can't even get a single HD that hold 1TB?

It is a theoretical limit, not the practical limit. I remember reading that ATA/ATAPI-6 standard would give a theoretical limit of 140+ petabytes but a 32 bit OS limits it t 2+ terabytes

[ricksfiona]

I think this is a memory card standard that will actually come in at a good time.

1GB SD cards are coming down in price in a big way and I can EASILY use up that space for data, MP3 and video files. Sometime in 2005, 2GB SD cards should be at a price level near what 1GB SD cards will be at.

With this new memory card format with it's similar footprint to SD, it should be too much trouble for equipment makers to make adjustments. 2GB SD cards will probably sufficient for a year or so and then we'll see equipment manufacturers offering PDA's with the new card format. What manufacturer would want to use a memory format that will be obsolete in a year? Then we'll see flash memory at much higher capacities. Like 40GB :D It's really great timing.

With the speed/storage increase and it's form factor, I'm totally looking for the Pocket PC to embrace each other. By mid 2005, high-end Pocket PC's should be common @ 624MHz and be reaching the 800MHz+ level, VGA will be avail. This all points to a win-win situation.

I CAN'T WAIT! 8O

[PPCRules]

Given the likely price premium for a long time, I'm not really interested.

[Ed Hansberry]

How do you get 2TB when you can't even get a single HD that hold 1TB?

It is a theoretical limit, not the practical limit. I remember reading that ATA/ATAPI-6 standard would give a theoretical limit of 140+ petabytes but a 32 bit OS limits it t 2+ terabytes
Are you sure? XP/2000/NT4 is a 32bit OS and it can address 16 exabytes.

[CoreyJF]

I thought so, I remebered reading an article on the web not to long ago about HD size barriers . I found the site http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm It is on the internet so it has to be acrurate, right? :wink:

[jlp]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20040805A4013.html.

The size is roughly the same as an SD card but transfers data at nearly 10 times the rate an SD card can and over 7X the speed a CF card can.

[...]

I didn't realize SD cards topped out at 4GB. :cry: The new μcards are expected to be in production in early 2005. For the speed and size increase, I'd go for that over SD.


Hold everything everybody they list mini SD cards figures NOT regular SD cards.

So your comparison regarding size is not correct. As far as maximum capacity I don't know about it, it might be different or similar to the mini SD number given.

[jlp]

My bad, my standard SD card also measures 24 x 32, like the standard μcard. Plus SD's thickness is 2.1 vs 1.4mm.

The size limit for standard SD cards is 32GB, planned for 2007+.

It's quite far from 2TB but still a few years away.

So we can expect our investments to be secure for the next 5+ years I'd say, coz 32 GB can hold a heck of a lot of data.

[Ryan Joseph]

Did anyone catch the "Artifact from the Future" in the latest Wired Magazine? It's a PetaSD card...a memory card storing one Petabyte. It's dated 2009. That date sounds about right to me. Give it 4 more years and we'll be there. 8)

[Jeff the pianoguy]

Am I the only one who doesn't know what that little symbol is in front of the word "card" in “μcard”? Someone please enlighten me. :roll:

[dh]

Am I the only one who doesn't know what that little symbol is in front of the word "card" in “μcard”? Someone please enlighten me. :roll:

It's the Greek letter "mu".
See here: http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html

[[email protected]]

Am I the only one who doesn't know what that little symbol is in front of the word "card" in “μcard”? Someone please enlighten me. :roll:
correct me if i'm wrong' but i think it is the greek letter: Mu

Ori

[jlp]

indeed it's Mu and generally stands for micro, hence μCard = MicroCard

[jlp]

Olympus has had a series of micro :!: cameras for some times, with now some digital versions thereof, they call it μ and even add the pronunciation stuff in the official denomination: "μ [mju:]" :D