Samsung has introduced a new SD card that it claims can last for 16 years of continuous writing.
The South Korean giant’s calculations for the life of PRO Endurance memory cards — as that’s the name of the new technology — assume they’re used to record 1920×1080 video content at 26Mbit/sec (3.25MB/sec).
At this rate, the 256GB model is rated for 140,160 hours of usage. The smaller-capacity models don’t last long because they’re overwritten more frequently, so the 128GB, 64GB, and 32GB models each cut the lifespan of their larger siblings in half.
Samsung said the cards would be best suited for devices such as CCTVs, dash cams or body cameras.
register Wondering if enterprise users would also be interested in showing these cards to VMware, given the virtualization giant’s decision to (eventually) deprecate booting from removable storage, as it could wear out and introduce unwelcome instability. VMware may still have reasons to rule out this new elastic medium, as its maximum read and write speeds of 100MB/sec and 40MB/sec, respectively, are not too high.
Samsung also rates the devices as water-resistant, “temperature-resistant” (they will work between -25°C and 85°C), X-ray-proof (they can pass airport inspections), and immune to magnetic fields that are less powerful than in MRI Those found in the imager, survive a 5-meter drop and are “wear-resistant” if properly inserted and removed from the device up to 10,000 times.
Oddly, the warranty offered for these cards falls far short of their rated life.
In related news, Samsung has revealed on Twitter what it claims is the fastest Universal Flash (UFS) chip based on version 4.0 of the standard (not yet released).
Breakthrough: Samsung has developed the industry’s highest performance Universal Flash (UFS) 4.0 storage solution, which has been approved by the JEDEC® Board of Directors. What is UFS 4.0 and what does it mean for the future of storage? Read on to learn more. pic.twitter.com/4Wxdu0J2PD
— Samsung Semiconductor (@SamsungDSGlobal) May 3, 2022
Samsung’s post says UFS 4.0 will be in production in the “third quarter” of 2022, and due to its small size and read/write performance of 4,200MB/sec and 2,800MB/sec, the memory will be ideal for 5G smartphones.
Smartphones are rarely used for more than three or four years — so the technology in Samsung’s new removable storage may be relevant. ®