[ad_1]
My Nintendo Switch has a 200GB microSD card and I ran out of space months ago. So, naturally, I'm always looking for a good deal for something bigger. But I do not think I want to spend the money to double my disk space and reach 400 GB. I want something even bigger. Fortunately, SanDisk and Micron are about to provide a very expensive answer to my dilemma.
SanDisk and Micron today announced microSD storage cards with a capacity of 1TB. These are the first two cards to have this capacity in this format, and you can expect to have to pay for the privilege to own one. Micron and SanDisk microSD cards will be launched in the second quarter, and SanDisk offers a $ 450 1TB version, $ 150 more than a Nintendo switch.
But if this price is high enough, the technology that allows these cards should quickly reduce production costs.
QLC NAND is gaining momentum
Micron uses QLC cell NANDs (QLC) on four levels that are divided into 96 layers. This allows Micron to create more dense storage on smaller modules. This should allow the company to save money and produce more capacity readers and storage cards than ever before.
"Micron's technological leadership in 3D NAND technology with CMOS and the 96-layer QLC layer has been instrumental in the development and launch of the world's first 1TB microSD card," said Micron NAND Director Aravind Ramamoorthy. . "The new 1Tb c200 microSD card gives consumers the freedom to capture, share, store and enjoy more content while respecting their mobile-centric lifestyles."
The problem with QLC NAND is that it is slow, which is why, for an SSD storage drive, companies such as Samsung and Intel combine large single-level-level (SLC) caches to quickly read and write most data. But this is less of a problem for SD cards because they usually do not have a very fast speed, and microSD 1 TB cards from Micron and SanDisk are no different.
The SanDisk card reads at 160 MB per second and writes at 90 MB per second. The Micron card, meanwhile, reads at 100 MB per second and writes at 95 MB per second. But both cards also meet the A2 performance rating, which means that they can queue and cache the application data to load programs faster.
Nintendo Switch will probably not be able to take advantage of the A2 specification, but other devices will certainly do it.
[ad_2]
Source link