14 DAY TRIAL // SanDisk, one of the world's leading vendors of flash-based storage solutions, has announced today that it has begun production shipments of its next-generation flash memory cards, developed on the company's advanced X4 flash memory technology. According to the Milpitas, California-based flash memory vendor, the new technology, which was announced early this year, can hold four bits of data in each memory cell, twice as many as the cells that are available in conventional multi-level (MLC) NAND memory chips.
“The development and commercialization of X4 technology represents an important milestone for the flash storage industry,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief operating officer, SanDisk. “Our challenge with X4 technology was to not only deliver the lower costs inherent to 4-bits-per-cell, but to do so while meeting the reliability and performance requirements of industry standard cards that employ MLC NAND. Our world-class design and engineering team has applied its deep experience with high speed 2 and 3-bits-per-cell flash chip designs and collaborated closely with our leading design partners to develop and perfect new and powerful error correction algorithms to assure reliable operation. This intensive multi-year effort has generated powerful new patents and know-how, and demonstrates SanDisk’s relentless drive for innovations that result in the ever expanding use of flash storage in consumer applications such as music, videos, photos, games and numerous third party applications.”
The new technology was announced back in February this year, when the memory vendor said that this would enable users to take advantage of an increased storage capacity, in the same form factor as today's traditional SD cards. The new technology will enable SanDisk to provide customers with the world's first Flash Memory card featuring 64 Gigabit NAND flash chip. The X4 technology will be at the base of new 8GB and 16GB SDHC and Memory Stick PRO Duo memory cards, slated to be released by the company soon.
According to SanDisk, the technology has been in development for five years, but when finally developed the X4 is expected to enable consumers to take advantage of higher-capacity, small-sized storage solutions, such as the upcoming SD cards that SanDisk just announced.