back to article Micron aims 1.5TB microSD card at video surveillance market

Chipmaker Micron is offering a microSD Card for embedded applications with an impressive 1.5TB capacity, enough to hold four months of continuously recorded security camera footage, according to the company. Announced at the Embedded World 2022 conference in Nuremberg, Germany, Micron's new i400 [PDF] is claimed to be the …

  1. Mike 137 Silver badge

    "a mean time to failure rating of two million hours"

    It'd be nice to know the lifespan in write cycles per cell as well. Given that it uses 4 bit cells, that could be less than one might think as we're no longer talking binary at the cell level - it's back to analogue.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: "a mean time to failure rating of two million hours"

      Except for police body cams where it will fail after every shot

      1. eldel

        Re: "a mean time to failure rating of two million hours"

        Probably fail to turn on. Safer that way. You never know when a "convenient failure" inadvertently fails to happen and leaves awkward evidence.

  2. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

    I joked about it years ago, maybe it will come true

    We will have ZFS on our phones to safely store the amount of data.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: I joked about it years ago, maybe it will come true

      A raid array of SD cards?

      Actually given their small size, low write speed and unreliability - that's not a bad idea.

      Quick invent a silly name with no vowels and call the VCs

      1. RAM Raider

        Re: I joked about it years ago, maybe it will come true

        Card Redundancy Access Protocol?

        1. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

          Re: I joked about it years ago, maybe it will come true

          ZFS - ZFS Fone Storage.

        2. thetjb

          Re: I joked about it years ago, maybe it will come true

          Single Host Intergrated Transactional Storage and Training Artificial Inteligent Nodes

  3. TrevorH

    Yes, but how much?

    Enquiring minds want to know

    1. Androgynous Cow Herd

      Re: Yes, but how much?

      like all storage - it will be cheaper next year

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Yes, but how much?

        That's what we thought for hard drives for the last 2 years.

    2. Semtex451
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Yes, but how much?

      Sloppy - didn't even both with "Price TBA"

  4. David Austin

    Whelp;

    Just found my new Nintendo Switch memory card - I've nearly filled the current SanDisk Extreme Pro 1 TB.

    - Yes, I'm fully aware this is definitely a problem, but not of a technical nature...

  5. Mishak Silver badge

    LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

    Hopefully, that means ECC DRAM is going to become a lot cheaper on consumer platforms as well.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

      Yes as soon as there are cheap chipsets that support it.

      Which will happen once there is user uptake

      Which will happen once there are cheap motherboards that support it

      Which will happen once there are cheap chipsets

      ......

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

        Nah, there's always gamers that want the latest'n'greatest... that's how the cycle gets started.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

          Do games care about error correction ?

          1. David Austin

            Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

            The amount of gaming machine suppliers still offering RAID 0 as an option suggests no they do not...

            1. doublelayer Silver badge

              Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

              That makes sense, especially for gamers. They can probably pull a lot of that data back down if they lose it, and for the subset that can't be downloaded again, that's why there are external backups. Unlike a server or workstation, there's usually not a need to have it continue working when a drive fails. Meanwhile, they'll want fast access to a large amount of data. This would seem to be the only case where RAID 0 is desirable.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

                "...RAID 0 is desirable"

                *_IF_* you overclock for gaming, ECC is helpful as errors are more likely, so ECC might save you from a BSOD or 2... but not many.

                Storage speed.... who needs fast storage if you have enough RAM to load the entire game into a RAM disk?

                256GB+ RAM or why bother!

              2. David Austin

                Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

                I don't disagree with the theory, but in all but the most insane edge cases, a single class 40 SSD would have so much I/O that Graphics or CPU would be the bottleneck, rather than storage latency.

                All RAID 0 does for most gamers is be an expensive way to double the chance of data loss.

                And as someone that's had to do grief counselling for lost animal Crossing islands and SIMS 4 Saves, I can assure the importance of the data is not matched by the backup regime of the average gamer.

            2. Stuart Castle Silver badge

              Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

              It's an easier sell to newbies to have Raid 0 and have double the storage rather than other raid levels, and ask them to pay extra for drives to mirror or store parity data.

              Especially as increasingly they can use the cloud to back things up, and also for re-downloading software via online app stores.

              1. ITMA Silver badge
                FAIL

                Re: LPDDR5 ISO 26262 ASIL D

                "Especially as increasingly they can use the cloud to back things up, and also for re-downloading software via online app stores."

                And as Swann security customers found - so can other people download your video camera footage from "the cloud" and even view your live camera feeds through "the cloud".

  6. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Evil Google

    Time to bug Google again about crippling microSD cards in Android 11+ and Play Store. ~100MB/sec drops to old CD-ROM speed.

    https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/179412245

    Plus dozens of other tickets that Google marked as "Not reproducible" on Pixel devices with no microSD slot.

  7. Conundrum1885

    1.5TB

    Thats a lot of space.

    There was I thinking 128GB (faulty but works fine at 2.8V) card in my phone camera watch was a lot.

    As yet have only filled up 4% of its capacity but plenty more available if I need it.

    The even better feature here is that if there is a need, the extra space can be filled with ISOs

    so no need to carry around a pile of physical media.

    Having a directory filled with movies and MP3s is also handy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 1.5TB

      "Having a directory filled with movies and MP3s is also handy."

      A friend was convalescing after an operation - and his pal loaned him a hard drive full of movies. Something went wrong and the files appeared to be lost. No backup. Fortunately a recovery application managed to restore the directory structure.

      It's always the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket.

  8. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I wonder what size of real storage they will have when the fakes appear on Aliexpress or Ebay? I got a 32GB card once which would start over writing data after 8GB was written. So maybe 128GB of actual storage for a fake 1.5GB card?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you want to make your own SD card

    There are "simplified" specifications available on the sdcard site.

    The first simplified specification is called Part 1: Physical Layer and purportedly includes the full command protocol (minus PCIe and NVMe extensions)

    https://bafybeid6u6p3tkr5a6fiyfqxjsvy2whdwlz2uvinqvcqvt6jq7oqq26sma.ipfs.dweb.link/Part1_Physical_Layer_Simplified_Specification_Ver8.00.pdf

    The storage cap with SDXC is 2TB, and with SDUC is 128TB.

    More docs at https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/pls/ .

    since something is clearly holding the mainstream market back all these years

    1. David Austin

      Re: If you want to make your own SD card

      The honest answer to that is the potential audience size for 1TB+ Card sizes is too small and price sensitive to be a viable market.

      at the start of 2022, only 0.3% of all SD cards sold were 1TB - Several companies have Bigger designs ready to roll, once the demand and economics allow them to hit the market

      Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/where-are-2tb-microsd-cards-3077526

      1. herman

        Re: If you want to make your own SD card

        There is a world market for about five computers.

        1. David Austin

          Re: If you want to make your own SD card

          "once the demand and economics allow them to hit the market"

  10. Phil Kingston

    1.5TB on a MicroSD? Take that Johnny Mnemonic

  11. Richard 12 Silver badge

    What does that do to bandwidth?

    The bandwidth of a cargo plane must be incredible now.

    2 million of these things on a plane...

    1. Tom 7

      Re: What does that do to bandwidth?

      Fly that high enough and the universe could write a 3d message in the cards with cosmic rays!

    2. edjimf

      Re: What does that do to bandwidth?

      2 million of these would comfortably fit in 1 cubic metre, allowing 0.5 cm3 each, which is probably far more than they need.

      Weight limitations aside, filling a 747-8F's capacity of 692 m3 at a density of 2,000,000/m3 gives 1.933 ZB (~2 billion TB)

      I have a vision of a 747 filled with 692 builder's bulk bags each brimming with 2 million SD cards!

      The logistics of reading nearly 1.4 billion cards at the end of the "data transfer" journey are another problem.

  12. Tom 7

    Crickey

    According to the back of my fag packer for around £100 and one of these you can put together wildlife surveillance box (PV/pi zero/camera) with motion detect software that could easily record a years activity.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Crickey

      Time to make it compulsory for every pet cat to wear a bodycam. Then the blame for any garden or wildlife destruction can be fairly attributed.

  13. Drone Pilot

    Imagine what Apple will charge for that in the next iPhone...

    I'll either take the 32GB option or remortgage my house for the 1.5TB option

    1. gnasher729 Silver badge

      Re: Imagine what Apple will charge for that in the next iPhone...

      Why iPhone? The real use would be inside a MacBook

      MacBooks are full to the brim, but an sd card is tiny and should be made to fit. Now MacBooks come with ssd drives that are bloody fast and bloody expensive. But I don’t need a 2TB ssd drive that is bloody fast. A 512 or possibly 256 GB of bloody fast SSD, with 0.5, 1.0 or 1.5 TB of a bloody slow and dirt cheap SD card would be absolutely fine for me and for many people. Now take Apple’s “fusion” software and you don’t have to worry where things are stored. Looks like one drive. With everything you use daily bloody fast, and long term storage slow.

  14. Roger Kynaston

    When I were a lad

    </cod lancashire>

    I remember the first hard disk I encountered a whole 40Mb. I also read about the first 10Mb Winchester drives but my old Commodore 64 only had a 5 1/4 floppy.

    we need an old codger icon.

    1. Death Boffin
      Windows

      Like this?

      Content

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: When I were a lad

      The standard replaceable hard disk on the 3rd generation mainframes in the mid-1960s was 8MB.

      In 1970 we had a 640MB fixed disk that weighed 1.5 tonnes; cabinet about 3mx2mx1m; with water cooled bearings. Someone managed to find a clever use of I/O command chains to archive it to tape in only 8 hours.

      Now my Arduino happily uses an 8GB SDcard for MP3 files.

    3. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: When I were a lad

      First HD was an 80Mb drive.. When I moved that machine over to run linux (Slackware 0.99pl15) I managed to acquire a massive 330Mb ESDI drive and controller. The drive was too big into the chassis (it was a full-height drive and the desktop chassis was too small..) so it sat outside the chassis on the floor.

      Kept that room quite nice and warm too.

  15. ITMA Silver badge

    Oh great!

    Fine for single camera systems like body cams.

    Otherwise - put your video where it belongs, on a physically secure (ideally remote and ideally owned and physically controlled by you) NVR.

    4 months of your precious security footage, possibly showing the perps casing the job, gone when they nick/destroy the camera.

    1. ChipsforBreakfast

      Re: Oh great!

      In quite a few scenarios recording at the edge (ie. in the camera) makes a lot of sense. Not only does it keep the network a lot quieter you'll often find the camera itself is far harder to reach/destroy than the NVR is.

      Of course, the gold standard is on-camera, on-NVR and off-site but if you're that paranoid you already know that (and have the diamond mine to pay for it!)

      1. ITMA Silver badge

        Re: Oh great!

        " you'll often find the camera itself is far harder to reach/destroy than the NVR is."

        Only if the NVR has been installed by a total numpty...

        I set up a 10 camera system for a friend on a remote site which has 80/20 FTTC. The NVR is very, very much harder to both find and get at than the cameras - which are after all visible - and where each camera is installed is usually in view of one of the other cameras.

        As the cameras are a mix of two brands, over half (the much better brand) have microSDs in them anyway, but that is because that is necessary for VCA (video content analysis) for their gamut of smart video event detections tricks (allegedly utilising "deep learning"). So the also do a degree of "built in recording" but the main feeds are done via the NVR. Those we can download at will far quicker than someone can get at the NVR.

  16. Stu J

    Amazing

    That means microSD cards have now reached roughly a 180,000,000 fold data density improvement compared to 3.5" floppy disks

  17. Danny 2

    Mid '90s and I worked in Pinkhill, Edinburgh for the CAA. I plucked a 2mm camera on a half centimetre circuit board out of the sole of my shoe. I looked at it and looked at it then told my colleagues, "That's a camera, that is scary."

    "Oh don't worry about it, they just make soft toys for children down there." Not reassuring, in fact far more alarming. I wasn't a parent but couldn't understand why parents weren't concerned by this. I never again masturbated in a hotel, never nude unless in a group.

    μSD is inherently scary at any capacity because you can swallow it and shit it out without data loss. Or so I've been told by prisoners.

    1. Hubert Cumberdale

      "never nude unless in a group"

      Erm...

    2. herman

      Never get caught in bed with a naked man or a dead woman.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        ...or dead bishop.

        1. Winkypop Silver badge
          Devil

          “...or dead bishop.”

          That would be an ecumenical matter.

  18. This post has been deleted by its author

  19. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    As a support person, I'm just looking toward the day I have to explain to a user that they've just lost 1.5TB of data when the SD card that was incredibly important, but not backed up, fails.

  20. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    Don't you just love the vague impressions of the capacity of things storage companies sometimes give? "enough to hold four months of continuously recorded security camera footage". Surely that depends on the amount of cameras, as well as the quality they record at?

    It might be enough to contain four months of continuously recorded footage for one camera, but what if you have 5? Or 10? Admittedly, once you go above 10, you are probably getting into the realms of having a decently specced storage system mounted in a server rack somewhere (with off site backup), or at least a NAS though.

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