Huge capacity SD HC memory cards

[inefficient]

Toshiba announced their high capacity SDHC memory cards today.

32GB 80,000JPY - Jan 08
16GB 40,000JPY - Oct 07

I bring this up in the console section because I know the PS3 has the ability to read 4GB and 8GB SDHC cards. And these specs say these are also Class 4 speed devices so I imagine it would also work. But we could speculate on whether or not there will be issues on getting them to work with the built in card reader. And what we could use them for if they did.

Also because I think it is quite a significant breakthrough that they were able to get 32 and 16 GB NAND flash memory down to this size! The implications to consoles could be big. I know the cost is high right now, but that price should come down at an exponetial pace as per the current trend. As far as actual manufacturing costs, I don't expect it would be much higher than the much lower capacity cards we use now.

I've been saying this for a while now. But within a few years, and certainly within this current gen consoles life cycle, flash memory should replace HD for mass storage. Smaller quieter, less heat, lower voltage, no moving parts, will get cheaper. It's a match made in heaven.

Link: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2007_08/pr_j2201.htm

 

[tuna]

I think next year some new version of the PS3 will have a flash instead of HDD....16 GB seems cheaper than a HD, and while smaller, would be enough, especially if you can add you own HDD.....

Edit: Sorry, mistook production for price.....my bad...

 

[Rainbow Man]

32GB SD-sized memry card is pretty insane. Just imagine what you could do with a CF card using flash devices of that capacity.. 200GB or more doesn't seem totally out of the question.
Peace.

 

[archangelmorph]

32GB SD-sized memry card is pretty insane. Just imagine what you could do with a CF card using flash devices of that capacity.. 200GB or more doesn't seem totally out of the question.
Peace.

It's bigger than the 360's HDD..




Solid State PS4/Xbox720 storage drives damn near confirmed!!

 

[Mintmaster]

Also because I think it is quite a significant breakthrough that they were able to get 32 and 16 GB NAND flash memory down to this size! The implications to consoles could be big. I know the cost is high right now, but that price should come down at an exponetial pace as per the current trend. As far as actual manufacturing costs, I don't expect it would be much higher than the much lower capacity cards we use now.

I'm not sure if exponential is good enough.

16 GB costs what, over $300? An optimistic 60% reduction per year would still cost $20 after 3 years. Current gen consoles will probably cost $100-$150 by then. For the PS4 gen it's likely, and maybe a high end slimline version would also use flash down the road. However, there's a long way to go before flash gets cheaper than a harddrive at these capacities. That 16GB flash chip has over a hundred billion bits of storage on a piece of silicon.

 

[archangelmorph]

I'm not sure if exponential is good enough.

16 GB costs what, over $300? An optimistic 60% reduction per year would still cost $20 after 3 years. Current gen consoles will probably cost $100-$150 by then. There's a long way to go before flash gets cheaper than a harddrive. That flash chip has over a hundred billion bits of storage on a piece of silicon.

Maybe but consider the fact that that 16GB SD card is *tiny*..

I'm sure a larger solid state storage unit could be manufactured at around 2.5" (PS3, 360 HDD size) at a much cheaper than $300..

 

[inefficient]

I'm not sure if exponential is good enough.

16 GB costs what, over $300? An optimistic 60% reduction per year would still cost $20 after 3 years. Current gen consoles will probably cost $100-$150 by then. For the PS4 gen it's likely, and maybe a high end slimline version would also use flash down the road. However, there's a long way to go before flash gets cheaper than a harddrive at these capacities. That 16GB flash chip has over a hundred billion bits of storage on a piece of silicon.

I'm not thinking 3 years. More like 5 years, but less than 7. Within this gen's life cycle.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Same sort of timeframe as PS2 Slim. A Slimline PS360 could go with the solid-state for minimal power consumption and heat, although I don't know how this stuff holds up under the same sort of workloads as an HDD. AFAIK they have (or did have) limited read/write cycles, which wouldn't affect their use in cameras and the like especially where owners upgrade all the time. Isn't that one of the reasons solid-state HDD replacements cost a lot more than the equivalent of a bunch of 4GB SD cards stuck on a PCB?

 

[inefficient]

The pin counts of the SD form factor probably hold back the speed more than anything. With a larger form factor you could go with a larger bus plus you could go with a memory crossbar to boost up the bandwidth. And we know latency should be an easy win over mechanical discs.

 

[Gubbi]

Isn't that one of the reasons solid-state HDD replacements cost a lot more than the equivalent of a bunch of 4GB SD cards stuck on a PCB?

I think it's an economy of scales thing.

There's no technical reason Flash couldn't replace HDDs. Flash RAM can do at least 10,000 write cycles. To ensure that all parts of the Flash ram gets an equal amount of writes you would need some firmware that re-distributes the location of often-written blocks (like scratch pad space).

A 32GB Flash card could be written for more than 120 days continously with 30MB/s before exausting the write cycle guarantee.

So IMO, Flash could be a valid replacement for HDDs in consoles in the near future (2-3 years).

Cheers

 

[AlNom]

AFAIK they have (or did have) limited read/write cycles, which wouldn't affect their use in cameras and the like especially where owners upgrade all the time. Isn't that one of the reasons solid-state HDD replacements cost a lot more than the equivalent of a bunch of 4GB SD cards stuck on a PCB?

I believe reading is fine. It's the writing that actually wears out the cells.

Also, isn't data transfer slower on sequential reading? I suppose for a console it isn't that much of an issue compared to the access/seek times.

 

[archangelmorph]

I believe reading is fine. It's the writing that actually wears out the cells.

Also, isn't data transfer slower on sequential reading? I suppose for a console it isn't that much of an issue compared to the access/seek times.

Data transfer isn't that much slower..

 

[Mintmaster]

Maybe but consider the fact that that 16GB SD card is *tiny*..

I'm sure a larger solid state storage unit could be manufactured at around 2.5" (PS3, 360 HDD size) at a much cheaper than $300..

I don't think size makes that much difference. In fact the cheapest 2.5" SSD's now cost around that price. We probably won't see cost go down at 60% per year, either. Low hanging fruit like MLC (two bits per cell) are gone.

inefficient, I could realistically see cost being low enough in around 5 years to actually make a noticeable price difference, but even in 2 years I would expect 100GB platters to be the minimum on harddrives. It's hard to say what kind of minimum we'd expect near the end of the console cycle. It may also be too late to negate the cost of a standard HDD in the meantime.

 

[Readykilowatt]

Maybe the Wii 2 will not have a disc drive. I would welcome such a move.

 

[one]

Right now Samsung MCAQE32G5APP-0XA 32GB 2.5inch SSD is available around $600, you can just put it in the PS3's HDD slot.

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...ducts/flash/Products_StandardType_25inch.html

EDIT: This is IDE, other manufacturers such as SanDisk have SATA SSDs.

 

[Rainbow Man]

The pin counts of the SD form factor probably hold back the speed more than anything.

Erm..why do you think that?

We have SATA harddrives that do 300-600MB/s aggregate using 6 wires. Wuith modern tech we don't need wide buses. In fact some say wider buses are contrary to high speeds.


pEace.

 

[Graham]

It will be interesting to see what place flash memory takes in the next round of consoles. My last prediction was 4-8gb of flash for use as fast-ish cache memory.

Then again, before the DS came out, a 128mb SD card wasn't exactly considered the most cost effective way to distribute a game.

 

[inefficient]

Erm..why do you think that?

We have SATA harddrives that do 300-600MB/s aggregate using 6 wires. Wuith modern tech we don't need wide buses. In fact some say wider buses are contrary to high speeds.


pEace.

Well I wasn't really just thinking of the external IO pin count. But the internal wires if you had to redesign it by dividing the storage up in to separately addressable banks. I'm just saying I dont think you can just clock these higher to get to higher speeds.
Like SATA SD cards IO bus are 4bits wide. But SATA transmits at Ghz speeds. Because there is probably no way they can clock the whole module up to that speed, they would have to redesign it so that many modules are feeding some kind of high speed memory controler.

 

[Gubbi]

Like SATA SD cards IO bus are 4bits wide. But SATA transmits at Ghz speeds. Because there is probably no way they can clock the whole module up to that speed, they would have to redesign it so that many modules are feeding some kind of high speed memory controler.

Internally you could have arbitrarily wide buses.

Cheers

 

[Simon F]

There's no technical reason Flash couldn't replace HDDs. Flash RAM can do at least 10,000 write cycles. To ensure that all parts of the Flash ram gets an equal amount of writes you would need some firmware that re-distributes the location of often-written blocks (like scratch pad space).

I suppose a bit of Reed-Solomon encoding might also help out in that regard, in that it would allow some tolerance of errors in the hardware. Of course, you could also implement the transparent "bad sectors" remapping that is done in today's HDDs.