Samsung debuts bigger, faster MMC cards

Samsung announced a pair of new MMC card advancements today, introducing both higher density and higher performance cards for all you media-happy junkies out there. The company's touting its NAND-based MMCplus card as the most capacious in the industry, topping out at a hefty 8GB, with 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB rounding out the line. On the other side of things are a pair of decidedly smaller but speedier 1GB and 2GB cards, promising a read-speed of 40 MB/s and a write-speed of 25 MB/s, which should be enough to transfer six MP3 songs per second. Prices don't seem to have been announced, but the whole lot should be available by the end of the year.

[Adrian @ Jul 27th 2006 6:31PM]

This would be great if the majority of smartphones were using mmc cards to give users expandable memory!

[Corrupt Data @ Jul 27th 2006 6:33PM]

Where are the 4GB miniSD Cards...

[A. Davis @ Jul 27th 2006 6:59PM]

6 MP3 songs a second? Um, no. A write speed of 25MB/s is 25 MegaBits, not MegaBytes. A typical 3Mb to 6Mb MP3 is measured in MegaBytes as its measured in terms of the disk space it consumes. So while these are nice and fast, you missed a factor of 8 in your calculations (8 bits being in a byte).

[azark @ Jul 27th 2006 7:31PM]

most, if not all sd slots on smartphones can fit mmc cards

[villainy @ Jul 27th 2006 7:41PM]

Davis:
First read this:
http://www.oempcworld.com/support/MB_vs_Mbits.htm

Then read this:
http://samsung.com/PressCenter/PressRelease/PressRelease.asp?seq=20060727_0000276209
"The higher performance version makes use of SLC NAND flash memory, providing a read-speed of 40Mbytes/s and a write-speed of 25Mbytes/s."

[bogphanny @ Jul 27th 2006 8:23PM]

A.Davis: Thanks for the laugh.

[David Gurney @ Jul 27th 2006 8:35PM]

"A write speed of 25MB/s is 25 MegaBits, not MegaBytes."

Uh, TOTALLY WRONG. Notice how the B in "25MB" is CAPITALIZED? That means BYTES. If it were bits, it'd be a lower-case B.

[Jared Boehm @ Jul 27th 2006 9:14PM]

And where are the 8GB SD cards? I don't think my Canon SD400 will take MMC... what the hell's the difference anyway?

[Zach Al-Nasser @ Jun 13th 2007 12:54AM]

Nearly everything that takes SD takes MMC, but not vice versa. The difference is SD has a little lock switch, and it it slightly thicker. these should work on your camera.

[Mobile Reviewer @ Jul 27th 2006 10:34PM]

wow, just readed about 2gb card for $59 and now i see that samsung is rocking with 8GB. this flash card market becoming overheat now days.

[David @ Jul 28th 2006 12:34AM]

SD cards and MMC cards are compatible for the most part. SD is a superset (expansion) of MMC. AFAIK 90% of devices that will take one will take the other. Theres 2 extra pins on one of the sockets, MMC having 7 pins and SD having 9. I believe SD has some form of optional copy protection (thus the Secure Digital name). As long as the card is being used in serial mode (SPI) and not used to hold copyprotected stuff it shouldn't matter. I'm infact using a SD card in an MMC slot in my Zipit with the MMC driver.

[Jason @ Jul 28th 2006 9:20AM]

My Nokia 6230 takes MMC but not SD. My Toshiba 5100 laptop had an SD slot, but could not read MMC.

I thought SD had an upper limit of 2GB, and that's why there's the new standard {ugh} SDHC cards?

Couldn't a PC card sized MMC reader be made to accept 4 of these MMC cards? 32GB of NAND Flash for your laptop?

[PTNYC @ Jul 28th 2006 11:02AM]

I want to know why they can make 8gb MMC cards, but don't have 2gb RAM cards for the Macbook Pro (200-pin 2GB PC2-5300 (DDR2-667)). I would really like to shove 4gb RAM in my notebook.

[TomTheGeek @ Jul 28th 2006 3:22PM]

Because it's completely different types of memory, PTNYC. RAM = volatile and flash = non-volatile. Flash memory is a lot slower than RAM and has a limited lifespan.

[rbigner @ Jul 30th 2006 11:30AM]

> I want to know why they can make 8gb MMC cards, but
> don't have 2gb RAM cards for the Macbook Pro (200-pin
> 2GB PC2-5300 (DDR2-667)). I would really like to shove > 4gb RAM in my notebook.

There are 2GB modules for the MBP, but Apple has crippled the MBP so that it can only take 2GB total. See
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/719000469731/p/1

[rbigner @ Jul 30th 2006 11:32AM]

My 6620 (and presumably some other S60 smartphones) only supports FAT16, so it can't take any more than a 2GB card.