Toshiba just can’t seem to catch a break. In a recent report from Digitimes, its sources within the channel reveal that Toshiba has suffered a massive ransomware attack on its network, forcing the company to shut down its NAND memory production for 3-6 weeks.

According to the article, Toshiba has already resumed NAND production however, the damage has already been done. Toshiba’s NAND production has already been cut by nearly 100,000 wafers. NAND prices were previously expected to drop in the 4Q2017 as supply and demand reach equilibrium however, the latest revelation may delay this until next year.

While much of this is fairly bad news for [...]

Several years ago, Samsung made their first introduction into the branded memory card space with their EVO and PRO lineup of memory cards and quickly dominated the space thanks to its great performance, reasonable pricing, and strong brand.

Following the introduction of the EVO and PRO memory card lines, Samsung also introduced the EVO Plus and PRO Plus lineup of memory cards back in 2015 to offer consumers a memory card that offers better performance and higher capacities than its predecessors. Although the EVO Plus and PRO Plus memory cards were already a great choice for customers, advancements have been made in NAND flash [...]

The SD Association recently took the wraps off SD Specification 6.0 which includes the A2 (Application Performance Class 2) standard, designed for newer Android devices with the capability of using microSD cards as Adoptable Storage. Adoptable Storage is a new Android feature which rolled out with Android 6.0 Marshmallow allowing SD cards to be used as internal storage.

According to the announcement, A2 class memory cards will be required to include features such as command queue, cache, and self-maintenance as well as deliver performance meeting or exceeding random read performance of 4000 IOPS, random write performance of 2000 IOPS, and sustained [...]

Sony SF-G32 Memory Card | Source: Sony

Looking for the fastest SD card ever? Sony has you covered. In a recent release, Sony introduced the world’s fastest SD card designed for professional photographers and videographers for use with high end DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

The new line of SD cards which Sony refers to as the SF-G Series will feature speeds up to 300MB/s reads and 299MB/s writes with devices that support the SD card UHS-II standard. This has been achieved thanks what Sony refers to as their “unique firmware” programmed into the SD cards.

The Sony SF-G Series SD cards will [...]

At CES 2017, we recently stopped by to speak to our friends at Mushkin to take a quick look at what they’re planning on doing for the upcoming year and so far, it’s looking to be an exciting one. Not only is the memory giant launching a few new storage solutions, it’s also heading into the peripherals market with a great looking keyboard.

First up is the Mushkin Helix PCIe SSD, which is Mushkin’s first M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. Powered by the Silicon Motion SM2260 in combination with Micron 3D MLC NAND, the Helix has a sequential read speed of 2.5GB/s and a sequential write speed of 1.1GB/s. Random I/O [...]

With the ever expanding storage requirements of smartphones, cameras, and other mobile devices, the need for microSD storage capacity has been growing at an exponential rate prompting companies to offer ever increasing capacities of their memory cards.

Case in point is Kingston’s latest microSDXC memory card which now offers storage capacity up to 256GB. Previously, the Kingston microSDXC memory cards were only available in capacities of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB.

“We are excited to ship our new higher capacity 256GB microSDXC card for consumers who need more storage for photos, videos and other data,” said Annette Chan, Flash memory business [...]

According to a recent report from market intelligence firm TrendForce, supply shortages and surging demand from the 3Q2016 will continue into 4Q2016 increasing prices of NAND Flash. This will cause price increases of eMMC, eMCP and SSDs extending through the 4th quarter.

The main driver of increasing prices is due to smartphone demand. Smartphone demand has started to boom in the 2H2016 with sales of the iPhone 7 on the upswing causing major constrains on supply. Apple doubled capacities on each of the iPhone 7 models representing a substantial increase in NAND Flash consumption. Similarly, other brands such as Huawei, OPPO and Vivo are ramping up production and [...]

Western Digital recently announced that they’re now demoing the new 1TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDXC memory card prototype at the Photokina show now happening in Cologne, Germany.

“Showcasing the most advanced imaging technologies is truly exciting for us,” said Dinesh Bahal, vice president, product management, Content Solutions Business Unit, Western Digital. “Sixteen years ago we introduced the first SanDisk 64MB SD™ card and today we are enabling capacities of 1TB. Over the years our goal has remained the same; continue to innovate and set the pace for the imaging industry. The SanDisk 1TB SD card prototype represents another significant achievement as growth of [...]

If you’re like us, you’re probably always on the lookout for a good workflow system to get images from either your camera or videocamera into the computer. With all the different devices out there demanding different types of memory cards, you’re bound to end up having several different memory cards with several different memory card readers hooked up to several different USB ports. Unfortunately, this is a hassle especially when on the road as most laptops can only spare at one to two USB ports at most.

To solve this problem, Lexar introduced the Lexar Professional Workflow lineup of products which will make [...]

A confidential Phison roadmap was recently leaked by technology site, MYCE, which shows Phison’s upcoming PS8311 UFS controller slated for launch at the end of 4Q2016. This will be followed up by a higher performance PS8313 UFS controller slated for 1Q2017.

UFS is expected to be the successor to SD and microSD technologies with significantly higher performance thanks to the UFS standard’s full duplex operation and advanced queuing features. Samsung recently launched the first ever removable UFS memory cards not too long ago.

Source: Myce