The flash memory market has got a boost as SanDisk said Monday that it is shipping memory chips that will allow consumers to store more data on tiny Secure Digital flash cards.
The Milpitas, Calif., company’s X4 technology packs four bits of data into each memory cell. To date, flash memory chipmakers typically stored one bit or two bits per cell. Each individual die–or chip–holds 64 gigabits of data, or 8 gigabytes. This is the highest capacity per die in the industry, according to SanDisk.
The technology is shipping now in 8GB and 16GB SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards as well as 8GB and 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo cards, the company said.
Future related technology from SanDisk is expected to yield tiny Secure Digital (SD) flash cards that hold 64GB of data and larger capacities. Currently, mainstream SanDisk SD cards top out at 32GB.
The memory technology itself–the 4 bits per cell 64-gigabit memory–is codeveloped and co-owned by SanDisk and Toshiba. The X4 controller technology is solely owned by SanDisk.
Flash memory cards sold at retailers are typically not as reliable as solid-state drives–which also use flash chips–sold with laptops. And the higher the density per chip and the more bits per cell, the bigger the challenge for maintaining data reliability. SanDisk says it has met this challenge.
“Our challenge with X4 technology was to not only deliver the lower costs inherent to 4-bits-per-cell but to do so while meeting the reliability and performance requirements of industry standard cards,” Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Related News:
Recent Tech News
The 808 PureView device from Nokia, which comes fixed with a 41-megapixel camera, is surely the last big thing that we have seen from the Symbian platform. The camera of the device pitches it will ahead of others to the top-of-the-range devices and a comparison between the performance of 808 PureView images with those of HTC One S and iPhone 4S shows what a 41-mp camera is capable of.
Microsoft has been pursuing Motorola for quite some time in courts. The reason was that Microsoft alleged Motorola infringed one of its patents by including certain texting features in its smartphones. These features, according to Microsoft, are owned by the company and Motorola should have bought a license to use them. And it seems now that a German court agrees.
Google has been steadily working on its Project Glass and the prototype glasses from the project are being tested publicly by a number of Google personnel. While many have cast doubts as to whether or not these prototypes are fully functional and operate on their own, Google seems quite confident of the progress. The search giant has now unveiled the first video samples from the project.
Apple’s Siri has been lauded as one of the best voice-enabled personal assistants available. Although Siri is quite good, it is not perfect and does make mistakes. And now, Siri has a worthy contender in the form of S Voice, the voice assistant that Samsung unveiled to be a part of Samsung Galaxy S III. Galaxy S III will soon be in the hands of the consumers and S Voice will be pitted against Siri. Here’s a fairly accurate comparison of the two.
