Pretec to demo World's first 32GB SDXC and 100GB 666x CF

Judging by the frequent of Pretec breakthrough flash-based storage cards, breaking records must be part of Pretec quarterly exercise. The company is set to unveil not only the World's First SDXC, but also an unprecedented 100GB CompactFlash at 666x. The latter up the ante, broke company's own CF's record at 433X.

Even with new standard still in lobbying effort, Pretec has the go-ahead with the SXDC small form factor flash-based memory standard that's capable of reaching 2TB. Pretec will exhibit both the 32GB SXDC and 666x, that's capable of 100MB/s transfer rate, at PMA and CeDIA tomorrow. We'll visit each both tomorrow to dig deeper on the cost.

Hannover, Germany and Las Vegas, Nevada. March 3rd, 2009 - Pretec, creator of the highest capacity CompactFlash card in the world (100GB) and the fastest CF card in the world (433X), continues today its record braking history in the field of speed and capacity by unveiling the new SDXC 32GB, the world's first, highest capacity and fastest SD card at CeBIT booth Hall21/D83 and at PMA CFA booth at LVCC South Hall K286 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

SDXC (eXtended Capacity) is a next-generation SD card, with capacities up to 2 TB (2048GB), and read/write speed up to 50MB/s initially and up to 104MB/s in the future, with a possible 300MB/s as a long term roadmap. By using exFAT file system, Pretec's 32GB SDXC card is not compatible with SDHC, which is using FAT32 file system. The maximum access speed of traditional SD card (SD 1.1 spec.) is 12.5MB/s and maximum capacity is 4GB, in which Pretec 4GB SD is the 1st such high capacity card in the world in July 2005 (www.dpreview.com/news/0507/05072804pretec_4gbcard.asp). World's 1st 8GB SDHC card was introduced by Pretec in Aug. 2006 (www.tomshardware.com/news/pretec-8gb-sdhc-card,3377.html), and subsequently joint displayed with Sanyo's DV Xacti HD1a in Photokina 2006 (findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_Sept_25/ai_n16838419); maximum speed increased to 25MB/s for SDHC (SD 2.0 spec.), which is the access speed of Pretec 166X SDHC card (http://www.pretec.com/epages/Store.storefront/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Store.Pretec/Products/%22news-Feb.%2018%2C%202009%22). Pretec 32GB SDXC card, sampling now to design-in customers, can reach the speed of up to 50MB/s, depending on the host system design which needs to be compliant with SDXC specification*, will be enhanced the capacity to 64GB SDXC by the 2nd half of this year.

Pretec also reveals 100GB and 666X CF card, which can reach the speed of up to 100MB/s at CeBIT and PMA today, to be the largest capacity and highest speed small form factor memory card in the world. The next generation of CF card, called CFast, was first introduced by Pretec at CES 2009 (http://www.photographybay.com/2009/01/11/pretec-cfast-compact-flash-card-transfer-rate-of-160mbs/), with current maximum transfer speed of 375MB/s and 750MB/s in the future.

The 2TB capacity memory card (www.dvhardware.net/article3774.html) was 1st revealed by Mu-Card in 2004, a joint effort by Pretec, ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) and a few other companies in Taiwan, with maximum transfer speed of 120MB/s. The significant boost of the capacity is due to the scheme of "Sector Addressing" instead of "Byte Addressing" (www.allbusiness.com/electronics/computer-equipment-computer-chips-memory/5054211-1.html) published by Pretec in 2005. Mu-Card Alliance was subsequently merged with MMC Association, which in turn is part of JEDEC organization.

* As of today, no SDXC compliant host systems are available in the market yet