Progress marches on, as SanDisk announced Monday that they have begun shipping SDHC cards utilizing their new X4 technology (codeveloped with Toshiba) which fits four bits of data into each memory cell rather then the standard one or two allowing for higher memory density, thus higher capacity cards.

Using X4 architecture, SanDisk intends to break the current 32GB limit for SDHC capacity and release 64GB SDHC cards. Currently they are shipping 8GB and 16GB X4 SDHC cards as well as 8GB and 16GB X4 Memory Stick PRO Duo cards.

Consumer grade Flash memory cards are usually not as reliable as Solid State Drives which use the same memory chip architecture. The higher the density per chip and the more bits per cell, the less reliable the memory typically is. SanDisk says it has addressed this challenge with the new X4 chips.

According to Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk’s president and chief operating officer…

"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”

No pricing details or release dates for 32GB and 64GB SDHC cards are available yet. There is also no words when (or if) SanDisk will be able to produce 32GB and 64GB MiniSDHC cards for mobile phones or other devices using X4 technology.

Zealot (473 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).