Emerging SD card uses push controller development

Improvements in SD controllers will make the memory format fast enough for 4K video and running Android apps.

External media such as SD cards are not going away despite steady expansion of onboard storage capacity in smartphones, and controller companies are keeping up with emerging application areas by leveraging expertise in the SSD domain.

Silicon Motion Technology has introduced what it said is the first merchant SD controller, which supports the latest SD 6.0 specifications and meets the new A2 application performance rating with a minimum random read and write performance of 4,000 and 2,000 IOPS. The SD Specification 6.0 was announced earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress by the SD Association. It expands support for mobile devices with Application Performance Class 2 (A2), more than doubling random read and write speeds guaranteed in the entry-level App Performance Class 1 (A1), which was announced late last year.

In a telephone interview with EE Times, Robert Fan, US general manager at Silicon Motion, said the company's latest SD controllers demonstrate the evolution of the storage media as they must support bandwidth-intensive applications such as 4K video recording and playback and AR/VR, as well as better random read and write performance. Expandable memory cards with Silicon Motion's new controller will also provide sufficient capability so users can run Android 6.x/7.x applications directly from their cards.

While there has been plenty of speculation over the years that SD and other removable cards would fade away, Fan said the opposite is true, even as smartphones gain more onboard storage capacity. "The non-iPhone market has grown, especially in China," Fan said.

To read the full article, go to EETimes.