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SanDisk is upping the flash storage ante - to a massive 64GB.
The California-based company has revealed that it will start mass-producing the new flash memory technology, which it developed in conjunction with Japan's Toshiba under an R&D agreement.
The company inherited some of the x4 capabilities with its 2006 purchase of M-Systems. It allows four bits of data to be packed into each 'cell' on an SD card.
SanDisk says it will a highly-advanced 43-nanometre manufacturing process, and that the cells in the new x4 NAND flash cards will hold up to four times the data common across the storage industry.
SanDisk made the announcement at the International Solid State Circuits conference in San Francisco.
It plans to have the new x4 cards on the market midway through the year.
High-end cards from the company currently max out at 32GB, although its 8GB and 16GB cards are more readily, and cheaply, available.
The company also says it will use its 32-nanometre x3 technology in microSD cards - often used in mobile phones and smaller devices requiring large amounts of storage.
"We consider x3 as a major commercial breakthrough for flash memory that will extend Moore's Law in this and future generations of NAND flash storage," SanDisk senior VP of flash memory design and development Dr Khandker N Quader said in a statement.
"Innovative patented All Bit Line (ABL) architecture with advanced proprietary programming algorithms and multi-level data storage management schemes were used to overcome the challenges of developing a 3-bits-per-cell NAND flash memory chip without sacrificing performance or reliability, thereby paving the way for widespread use of x3 across many of SanDisk's product lines."
- NZ HERALD STAFF
