Panasonic hoping to launch 64GB SDXC card

SDXC may have a theoretical capacity range of 32GB to 2TB, but Panasonic has already confessed that it's hoping to launch a 64GB card as soon as feasibly possible. Regrettably, pricing and availability is still yet to be determined, but we're going to go out on a limb here and guessing it'll be somewhere between "pricey" and "crazy expensive."

[thedesolate1 @ Jan 8th 2009 2:20AM]

Awesome! Dedicated mp3 players will soon be a thing of the past when they can shove an sdxc port and mp3 player in just about any cell phone.

[tekdroid @ Jan 8th 2009 4:33AM]

Dedicated units offer different form-factors (a phone can never be as small as some portable audio). Dedicated units also satisfy more price points and some even pay more attention to sound concerns. Has little to do with storage available, IMO, though it might for a niche of users out there. Some favour better sound, some favour more codecs, some favour that, rarely do you see the ideal audio device in a phone, IMO, though the fact nearly all have removable batteries and storage is definitely a reason to consider them seriously, unlike the silly portable audio market in general.

Anyway, what got me about this announcement was:
"The new cards will provide capacities in the future ranging up to 2 TB at read/write speeds of 300 megabytes per second. "

I'm assuming this hasn't been reached yet but if those are anything close to being true, that's great. Pricing, as usual, will be stratospheric. The 2TB limit should be fine for a little while, though :p

[thedesolate1 @ Jan 8th 2009 4:41AM]

I really think its more about convergence. By the time those things reach those huge capacities I am positive that cell phones will have audio quality that can challenge dedicated mp3 players. Also you have to consider that nobody wants to carry around yet another device they will risk dropping or breaking.

[cwj @ Jan 8th 2009 7:20AM]

"Also you have to consider that nobody wants to carry around yet another device they will risk dropping or breaking."

Wrong. There will always be somebody who wants a dedicated audio device. Such is the nature of choice. As long as Personally, one of my main reasons for not converging is so that if one device is broken/lost, I haven't lost everything in one shot. Then there's battery life. I can goof around all day and run the battery down on my Sansa and not have to worry about being out of a phone.

If "everybody" was going to converge audio, and there's not a carrier that doesn't already give them an option to do so, seems it would have already happened.

Well, at least until we finally get our TriCorders.

[Levi @ Jan 8th 2009 10:30AM]

For someone who really wants to have his entire library on his player, hates having to change music on his device, and loves an excuse to buy another gadget, I "converged" with a RAZR V3i before they hit the states, and I might never go back. It's so convenient to always have it on you and never have an extra device. The storage capacity really is the thing that bothers me the most. The idea of throwing one of these things in my phone is awesome.

Though I'm sure apple will never release an iPhone that supports it.

[Zunavio @ Jan 8th 2009 2:22AM]

2 TERABYTES SD Card !!!

No Way !!

Wow !

[wolf4537 @ Jan 8th 2009 2:31AM]

2 TB SD CARD?!?!?!

Oh....MY...GOD!!! :D

[Arkenklo @ Jan 8th 2009 2:42AM]

Dudes, that is the maximum theoretical limit, the article reports that maybe there will be a 64 Gb card soon. Maybe.

[Sam Zebian @ Jan 8th 2009 2:58AM]

Yeah but look how quickly SDHC was able to reach it's limit of 32GB's! Only 2 years!! I don't think we'll be seeing 2TB SDXC cards in around 2 years, I think we might have 512GB SDXC cards in 2 years. I assumed this because it took 2 years to jump from 2GB regular SD cards in 2006 to 32 GB SDHC cards, which is a 4x increase in capacity (4x meaning it went 2 to 4, 4 to8, 8 to 16 and 16 to 32 GB's, so it doubled itself 4 times). Doubling the current highest capacity (32GB's) gives you 32 to 64, then 64 to 128, then 128 to 256, then 256 to 512, which equals 512GB's.

I guess we could call it the Moore's law of flash. Or we could just call it my law, since I just made it up, so we'll call it Zebian's law. Let's see if this theory of mine will stand the test of time (in other words let's see if we do actually have 512GB SDXC cards)

And if my theory is right about that, then we might have 2 TB SDXC in less than 2 years after that, perhaps 1.5 years? That would mean we might get SDXC cards in 2TB capacities in 3.5 years?

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 9th 2009 11:39PM]

@Sam

Check this out: (source = http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/28504/135/
"Samsung today announced the first 40 nm, 32 Gbit chip, which will enable memory card manufacturers to assemble 64 GB SD or Compact Flash cards... ...Samsung claims that the technology will allow the manufacturing of 256 Gbit chips in 20 nm"

Since 256/32 = 8, future 256 Gbit flash chips manufactured with 20nm transistors should allow (8*64) 512GB SD cards. The article above announcing the 40nm flash chips is from September 2006! Based on what I read elsewhere, the industry should be producing 20nm flash by the end of 2010.

After 20nm, it is still up in the air as it doesn't look like NAND flash will scale beyond that limit, although future developments could of course change that. Either way, there are a dozen other potential technologies that are being developed in labs around the world to replace NAND flash in future memory devices..

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 9th 2009 11:39PM]

woops, sorry about the spacing..

[superhobo @ Jan 8th 2009 2:37AM]

The price will come down, just like everything else.

[Down @ Jan 8th 2009 2:37AM]

I'm more interested in what Sony has up their sleeves to combat this.

[absinthe party @ Jan 8th 2009 7:49AM]

Knives.

[Omivaun @ Jan 8th 2009 2:38AM]

wow. that's just amazing. I can't wait till they come out. this will definitely replace the hard drive on bigger, more multifaceted PMPs.

[someone @ Jan 8th 2009 2:44AM]

we won't need ssds anymore!!!

[ecking01 @ Jan 8th 2009 2:44AM]

What sucks is this might mean is currently available camcorders and things like that won't be able to go past 32gb. I was really looking forward to 64 and 128gb in cameras but it seems like for that I may need new stuff. I wasn't aware sdhc would reach it's limit that quickly.

[chris @ Jan 8th 2009 10:44AM]

I don't understand how you could not have known the sdhc limit was 32GB, its been publicly known, discussed, and advertised (as the limit for sdhc devices) for as long as sdhc has been available.

[notatoad @ Jan 8th 2009 2:45AM]

the first sentence of this post seems to be implying that a 64GB card is somehow outside the SDXC standard, when clearly it is not. i'm confused.

[Trevor @ Jan 8th 2009 3:00AM]

How fast will it run though? At least as fast as say the flash memory in an iPhone, a nano, a wee zune and I'm interested

[Michael @ Jan 8th 2009 4:07AM]

I thought the limit on SDHC was 128GB's?

[Michael @ Jan 8th 2009 4:09AM]

According to wikipedia: "the SD Card association has artificially defined the maximum limit of SDHC capacity to 32 GB"

[Patriks7 @ Jan 8th 2009 4:19AM]

That's awesome! If this thing is fast enough to run an OS, imagine how small laptops can get! After all, the HDD is one of the biggest components in a laptop..

[Patriks7 @ Jan 8th 2009 4:50AM]

If this thing is fast enough to run an OS, this thing will make laptops so much smaller! After all, HDDs are one of the biggest components in there..

[Don @ Jan 8th 2009 7:16AM]

Anyone hear anything about backward compatibility? It would suck if I had to ditch my sdhc cards just because I get a new gizmo with an sdxc reader.

[cwj @ Jan 8th 2009 7:28AM]

My holding out on SDHC was not in vain! I win!!

[img eL @ Jan 8th 2009 7:50AM]

This is cool but I'm still expecting a 64GB SDHC card to come out

[Simon @ Jan 8th 2009 3:57PM]

Thats impossible. SDHC has a defined limit of 32GB. you will never ever get a 64GB SDHC card. its not possible.

[Rick @ Jan 8th 2009 9:46AM]

So how long before we can get HD movies (blu rays, etc) on these cards as opposed to disks?

[anantha92 @ Jan 10th 2009 10:40AM]

In theory we already can since Bluray movies are only about this size.

[Jack @ Jan 30th 2009 11:31PM]

SDHC cards with greater than 32 GB storage capacity is NOT IMPOSSIBLE. It is merely outside of the current specification, which can be revised at any time. The memory addressing used in SDHC allows a theoretical maximum storage of 2 TB. You may also recall that people talked about original SD cards not surpassing 1 GB, and yet they did, too. Demand will force higher than 32 GB storage versions to become available, even if they go to SDXC in the near future, if for no reason other than people not wanting to buy new devices to double their storage.