Dell, HP, and Lenovo bringing SDXC to laptops alongside 32nm Intel chipsets?
By Ross Miller 
posted November 30th 2009 10:47PM
posted November 30th 2009 10:47PM
Those incredibly sexy (as far as portable storage capacities are concerned) 64GB SDXC cards coming on the horizon? You're gonna want some hardware to work with it, and according to DailyTech, three of the largest computer manufacturers are looking to bring the upgrade with Intel's forthcoming Arrandale CPUs. Lenovo, HP, and Dell are reportedly working on new designs that'll contain both the new 32nm chipsets and SDXC readers. Not that we're surprised to see new SDHC's time running out, but it does give you something to look forward to.
How bout we get the USB 3.0 ball rolling first?
@Eternity Not from Intel until 2011. Which means it won't hit laptops until then because OEMs are unlikely to spend more money on extra chips.
@Eternity
Intel and Apple are just dragging their heels on usb 3.0 because they want lightpeak to be the dominant connection at that point...a real asshole thing to do, but smart
@Jeff Kibuule
Ok so lemme get this straight:
Intel is stalling on USB 3.0 and San Disk is stalling on 32Gb microSDHC.
They are killing me here. -_-
I've read some of the "the market doesn't demand it" bullshit but that doesn't fly with me... Motherboards, CPU, PSUs, GPUs all evolving but external data interfaces and memory cards are stagnant until the above companies are done milking every dime of existing products.
We need better competition but average Joe can't tell an Esata from a USB and can probably due with only 16GB in their phone.
@Streetfights
One of the MANY reasons that I don't like Intel or Apple.
@Eternity Actually, I agree with you about the irrelevance of this and the importance of USB 3.0, SATA 6.0Gbps etc. SDXC? Nice but whatever. Not that big a deal for a laptop, but hey, if you want that storage for some music player or something, you're going to want your laptop to support the format.
Still, lets not get all freaked out. This is the natural progression of ALL technology. Its easy enough to add USB 3.0 support through an external chip, just like the motherboards we're seeing being tested are doing. Sure really cheap laptops may not include USB 3.0 ports as a result. But higher end laptops likely will. And assuming things work out and the volumes go up and the spec doesn't get updated quickly to fix some problem, the things will go into the integrated silicon soon enough.
@Streetfights
Is there any good reason why anyone doesn't want Lightpeak to be the next dominant connector other than it's from Apple and Intel? Because I can't think of any.
@High
Backward compatibility. A USB 3.0 device will work with any USB 2.0, 1.1, or 1.0 machine (nearly every machine in use today), But light peak will only work on the newest computers coming out in the future. And just so everyone knows, Apple is NOT assisting the the development of light peak and is just as constrained by intel not supporting USB 3.0 as any other computer manufacturer.
Hows the backwards compatibility of sdxc?
@El Jefe
Probably null. Most likely on new devices will support, like SDHC.
I don't know, seems to be the trend so far.
@El Jefe
backwards compatibility is part of the draft-spec
sexy
@techguy78 "someday sexy will be be gone...and then Sandisk will bring it back"
@(Unverified) Where did it go?
Holy, shit.
Price & performance.
@Comment They should call it SD XTC
But i dont want standard definition xtc
I don't think there's any electrical difference between SDHC and SDXC. It's just that with SDXC you are supposed to use exFat as your volume format.
No matter what you do, it'll still be disappointingly slow, SDXC tops out at 20MB/sec or something. No SSD speeds for SD devices.
@spin cycle
35MBps write and 60MBps read
@spin cycle
A simple Wikipedia search shows what the difference is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#File_system
There may not be much difference physically between SDHC and SDXC (HC has a theoretical max of 2TB, but artificially limited to 32GB, XC has a set limit of 2TB), but the max read speed for XC is set at 104MB/s and 300MB/s in the future. SDHC has a max of around 45MB/s I believe.
The new SDHC will be very nice for cameras with high-def recording.
@spin cycle Okay, so the spec does go higher. But to see those speeds, we'd have to have class 108 and class 300 cards. Right now we have class 2,4 and 6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#SD_Speed_Class_Ratings
So apparently we're not even close to 20MB/sec yet, let alone 108.
Since we're posting style guides now, what does that first sentence say?
"Those incredibly sexy 64GB SDHX cards coming on the horizon?" Huh?
I am glad I am not the only one questioning the use of "sexy" in this article...lets review use of adjectives instead of cAPiTaliZATIon quirks please
I thought the theoretical limit of SDHC was 128GB. Why do we need a new standard so soon after that one was introduced? I can't imagine a scenario where you would need more than 128GB of storage on a card the size of a postage stamp.
@(Unverified) Actually, it's 2TB. It'll be a while before that happens, but that's the limit.
@joebish
The SDHC spec artificially limits its capacity to 32GB, but the technology is technically capable of up to 2TB
The SDXC spec allows up to 2TB
Just wanted to clear that up.
And I can't wait to have a 2TB card in my HD video device/PMP/Phone/whatever else they put in there by that time. Some other reasons for such an enormous card... A portable device that can hold all of your movies, music, and tv shows, and be a portable media center (a la ZuneHD); being able to increase system storage dramatically with a small card (for netbooks,etc.), being able to have all of my files and folders, anywhere. Who needs SSD/HDD when an SDXC could cover it?
So I hope they get them going and get them cheap enough for me to buy soon.
Even if it's not running at 300MB/s yet still 200MB/s are much faster than practically every platter based hard drive. All most people need is 50GB to run an OS with applications and in the size of an SD card. Put a platter based HDD next to it and it will run fast.
HPs now have a laptop with a eSata port doubling as a USb port. My point being, with eSata and USb combine-able, the USb 3.0 (or optical based USb) doesn't seem as special as an SSD with eSata.
@(Unverified) Current SDHC/XC cards are 2, 4 or 6. The class is the number of megabytes per second it does. So that means current cards push between 4 and 6 megabytes per second.
Where did you get 200MB/sec from?
@spin cycle
Their site:
http://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/sdxc
They are 104 right now and will hit 200MB/s next year.
Class 6= 6 MByte/s or 40x, not even close to 104MB/s or what their site says the potential could be.
we need 32gb microsdhc first.
Motherf..... I just finished replacing all the card readers in my home with SDHC-compatible ones. Hope I don't have to replace it again anytime soon.
for digital cameras sd xc is great imagine recording in HD on a 3 TB sdxc card , that should give u some time to record on