Western DIgital and Micron both release 1TB microSD memory cards

Micron and Western Digital have both unveiled 1TB microSD memory cards that will allow users to have huge amounts of storage space. This is happening just after Lexar began to sell the first 1TB SDXC memory card.

A recent article notes that processors can no longer keep up with Moore's law but memory makers keep cramming more storage into smaller units.

Moore's Law

Wikipedia describes Moore's law as follows: "Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years. The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and CEO of Intel, whose 1965 paper described a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years. Moore's prediction proved accurate for several decades and has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development. Advancements in digital electronics are strongly linked to Moore's law: quality-adjusted microprocessor prices, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras."

The two brands

Western Digital's SanDisk brand has read speed of 160 MBs per second compared to just 100 MB's for the Micron brand. However, the Micron memory card has its 96-layer, 3D quad-cell QLC NAND tech, so it can write a bit faster than the San Disk card. Its speed is 95 MBs per second compared to 90 MBs per second for ScanDisk. However, the next generation microSD Express cards are expected to write at 985 MBs per second.

Scan Disk card has a premium price

If you want to brag about how much storage your camera has you will need to pay for it. The 1TB SanDisk Extreme UHS-1 is to arrive on the market in April for a mere $450 dollars. The 512GB card sells for $200. Micron has yet to name a price on its 1TB card which is to go on sale the second quarter of 2019.

b]Lexar already has a 1TB card

Lexar already announced a 1TB card as well as a 1TB microSD as noted on the appended video. A January article this year describes the card: "Lexar has unveiled the first ever 1TB SDXC flash memory card for cameras that will actually go on sale to the public, the Professional 633x. It's a UHS-I rather than a much faster UHS-II model, but runs at the top limit for a UHS-I card at 95 MB/s (class 10). That should be fast enough for most cameras to capture 4K video (class V30) and a long burst of RAW photos."

Previously published in Digital Journal