This article is more than 1 year old

Micron gets edgy with 256GB surveillance SD card reveal in China

But still outclassed in capacity by SanDisk's tiny whopper

Micron has announced incoming snoopcam flash cards with up to 256GB capacity, trumpeting that edge storage is the future of video surveillance.

The cards come in 32 and 64GB capacities now, with 128 and 256GB cards on the way. They use 64-layer, 2bits/cell (MLC), 3D NAND and have firmware that claims to minimise frame drops and video loss. They have been stamped with a 2 million-hour mean-time-before-failure (MTBF) rating.

They also have monitoring software which estimates the useful life remaining in the card.

Micron has given them a three-year warranty with 24x7 use, and says this industrial-grade microSD is more reliable than consumer versions, but gives no comparative numbers. Instead it says it has twice the reliability of a Seagate 4TB SkyHawk video surveillance disk drive.

Not so fast, Micron. The latest SkyHawk AI drive also has a 2 million-hour MTBF rating.

SanDisk has a higher capacity 400GB microSD card, using 3bits/cell (TLC) 3D NAND. This little sucker has a 10-year limited warranty and is meant for smartphone/digital camera use. The product is said to be impervious to water, temperature, shock, and even X-rays.

You would think that a 10-year warranty gives the tech enough headroom for SanDisk to also make industrial-grade microSDs. It could drop the nominal capacity and use the saved flash cells to over-provision on endurance.

Micron claims edge video – the ability to store data within a camera instead of in a centralised recording facility across the network – is the future of IP video surveillance applications. Well, with this microSD card to sell, it would, and video cameras already have flash cards in them.

All Micron is doing here is dressing up existing tech with a trendy IoT/edge storage slant.

The cards were announced in Shenzhen, China. Micron has collaborations with the Shenzhen Security and Protection Industry Association (SSPIA) and channel partner Jinyu Global to help flog the cards in the Middle Kingdom.

The 32GB and 64GB cards are available now. The 128GB and 256GB versions should be sampling in early 2018, with volume shipments by the second quarter.

Get a tech briefing PDF here. It has some crap graphs with no quantities on the axes, though. ®

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