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Toshiba Press Release: TOSHIBA ANNOUNCES 2 AND 4 GIGABYTE COMPACTFLASH CARDS FOR DIGITAL CAMERAS AND OTHER CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DEVICES
2GB Cards Available in Standard and High-speed Models; Highest Density 4GB Card Achieved Using 90 Nanometer Multi-Level Cell NAND Flash Technology
Further expanding its portfolio of memory solutions for consumer electronics applications, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC)* today announced its new highest capacity 4-gigabyte (GB)1 CompactFlash card, and high-speed 2GB CompactFlash card. The new cards, developed by Toshiba Corp. (Toshiba) using 90 nanometer (nm) NAND Flash memory technology, help meet the continually increasing demand for greater capacity and performance in data storage cards for digital cameras, digital camcorders, MP3 players and PDAs, as well as some networking and embedded applications.
“Today’s highest resolution digital cameras offer image sizes greater than 8 million pixels and therefore require more memory card storage capacity per image,” said Brian Kumagai, business development manager for NAND Flash memory at TAEC. “Toshiba’s new high capacity CompactFlash cards are ideally suited for high resolution photo applications. For example, the 4GB card allows the user to store more than 156 uncompressed frames2 at eight megapixels, the highest resolution currently offered by most digital camera manufacturers, or approximately 2,000 eight megapixel images using standard compression ratios2.”
The high density of the new THNCF4G09PG 4GB card is achieved by combining four of Toshiba’s 8-gigabit (Gb)3 multi-level-cell (MLC) components in the matchbook-sized CompactFlash memory card packaging, and the standard 2GB card, designated THNCF2G04PG contains two of the 8Gb MLC components. Toshiba’s 8Gb MLC NAND Flash memory is currently composed of two MLC 4Gb NAND chips in a single TSOP package. MLC NAND stores two bits of information in each memory cell, compared to one bit-per-cell for Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash, and provides excellent cost/performance value well suited for use in low to high-end digital still cameras, camcorders and MP3 players.
For applications requiring both high capacity and faster write and erase performance, TAEC has added the new 2GB THNCF2G04DG High Speed CompactFlash Card. The High Speed CompactFlash Card is based on SLC NAND Flash technology, which stores one bit per cell, and utilizes an optimized controller with large block NAND technology to achieve higher data transfer rates, approximately twice as fast as the standard speed cards. The high-speed card is targeted for very demanding applications in digital photography, digital video, high resolution digital still cameras, PDAs, other high-end portable electronics products equipped with a CompactFlash Card slot.
The new 2GB and 4GB cards complement Toshiba’s existing lineup of CompactFlash memory cards, available in capacities of 128 megabyte (MB)4, 256MB, 512MB and 1GB.
“Our MLC NAND-based cards provide excellent performance for typical consumer applications, while our new High Speed 2GB CompactFlash card offers a higher performance option for demanding applications, professional photographers and avid hobbyists using ultra-high resolution digital still cameras,” said Kumagai.
TAEC recently conducted a study on the data storage performance requirements of digital consumer applications, comparing published performance characteristics of both MLC and SLC NAND against application requirements. This data demonstrates that Toshiba’s latest MLC NAND Flash chips go well beyond the performance necessary to support the data storage requirements of most consumer applications, including digital photography and DVD-quality video.
Toshiba’s MLC NAND exceeds the minimum read and write requirements of several digital video formats by implementing advanced design concepts and adjusting the control system of the memory cell. Based on published bandwidth requirements, Toshiba’s MLC NAND devices offer more than sufficient performance to support the minimum read and write specifications of various DVD-quality digital video file formats, including MPEG25, MPEG4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC)6 or H.264, and Windows Media® 9.05 files.
Among the findings of the study is that the 10,000 write/erase cycles of MLC NAND Flash are more than sufficient for extended use in digital photography applications. For example, the new 4GB card can store an estimated 156 uncompressed images 2 from an 8 megapixel camera, or 2,000 images7 using standard compression ratios. With its 10,000 write/erase cycles, the user would be able to store approximately 1.5 million uncompressed pictures or 20 million JPG compressed images within the expected life of the card. For further details on the performance study, please visit http://mlcnand.toshiba.com.
Pricing and Availability
Samples of Toshiba’s standard CompactFlash card are available now, priced at $299.99/unit for the 2GB and $499.99/unit for the 4GB, each.
Posted by Darren in our Accessories category on January 08, 2005