Puscifer
Member
When it comes to storage "some time" is like a year or so. SSD prices were literally halving YOY at one point, 256 gb used to be 200 dollars at one point and now that gets you 4TB
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Samsung announces new micro sd card faster than ssd
AREYOUOKAY?
Member
That's great and all but will it prevent it from death? I value how long it last not how fast it is.
Unknown Soldier
Member
This is just SD Express which has been a target spec for awhile now. We'll see what reaches the market and what real world uses there really exist for it
I'm more interested in IOPS than sequential transfer speed. What actually makes SSD's so fast is IOPS not sequential read/write
I'm more interested in IOPS than sequential transfer speed. What actually makes SSD's so fast is IOPS not sequential read/write
CamHostage
Member
The good news is that new SD Express specifications (established Oct of last year, these are the first I've seen of the classified cards even though SD Express has been on the market a bit) now have a promised "Minimum Read/Write Performance" rate. So the cheapest SD Express cards (not the cheapest SD cards in general, just these new ones which match the SD Express marking and are playable in newer SD Card readers) is supposed to be 150 Mbytes/sec, and the most expensive is 600. That's nowhere near the theoretical 4GB/S, but a guaranteed min is better than a bullshit max. (...That is, assuming the min holds up.)
microSD Express Doubles Speeds, New SD Express Speed Classes Introduced
SD Association (SDA) today announced the latest evolution of SD Express memory cards doubling microSD Express memory card speed up to 2GB/s, plus four
www.businesswire.com
SD Express is going to run you more money than a priced-to-move regular card; the main one that's out there was by Ritz Gear in 2022 was insanely $300 at launch for 256GB; that same card is now a more reasonable but still high-per-GB price of $60. (It says it can do 850MB/S read, 500 write, but those are maxes, not promises.) And that's a full-size SD Card, not Micro SD. So even if Nintendo does adopt this format with an onboard SD Express reader, and even if Samsung's SD Express cards prove that the first-gen was bad but the format can really deliver now, prices for the full 600-speed cards will set you back.
Still, I really hope all this works out. Super-fast game loading and data access would do a Switch successor wonders.
Griffon
Member
Could be a camera manufacturer.
Make sense to try to make super fast sd cards for filming 8k footage.
JordiENP
Member
I honestly don't think a camera manufacturer will help with the mass production of this. There's options for 8k like Cfexpress since there's no reason to utilize micro sd. This is trying to solve a problem that cameras don't have.
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CanUKlehead
Member
Portable Xbox confirmed.
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
Nintendo won’t want to launch new system over $399 and they have to make money on it day one, so every dollar they can shave off build cost is critical. That’s why im in the camp of like, maybe this sounds too good to be true.
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
If it ever happens, I’m there day one
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
I agree! Nintendo are more likely to use floppy discs than cutting edge storage if there's a cost advantage.
CamHostage
Member
I think people are making too much of there being a "successful collaboration with a customer to create a custom product." There's no description of what type of collaboration that is; could be a collab to create the product or to market, not to support it.
But either way, if Nintendo did ask Samsung to fix the troubled SD Express format, Nintendo's involvement would simply be indicating that it has a device that would drive up interest in the format, and then the addition of the SD Express pins/setup in its SD Card slot. SD Express is a currently-existing format, the only real news here is that now Samsung is making its own line of these cards (and that maybe there's a client's reason why they've gotten into the market after four years of sitting it out.)
...However, it is possible that the format just stalled out without a core use case, and a Switch successor might finally be the driving killer app. Users are pretty used to just buying the cheapest card they can find and the whole UHS/SD rating alphabet has confused the market, so SD Express has been DOA for many reasons. Now, a game device demonstrating why Express speeds are needed and beneficial, with a major brand name like Samsung jumping in to produce the cards with quality assurance and temp safety systems in place, might finally get this format going.
Samsung’s New microSD Cards Bring High Performance and Capacity for the New Era in Mobile Computing and On-Device AI
Samsung samples industry-first 256GB SD Express microSD card boasting speeds more than four times faster than current interface Samsung’s 1TB UHS-1 microSD card in mass production based on latest V-NAND technology
Readers for those cards are currently costly ($50 for a stand-alone dongle) and uncommon (Steam Deck does not support the format, and I'm not even seeing professional film cameras which support SD Express,) but it's possible that manufacturing a reader at mass scale inside a new console would likely change the cost. Once there's a reader onboard, the real cost is the cards themselves, which consumers would have to deal with, and Nintendo would have to justify as necessary for Swiitch 2 games.
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squarealex
Member
It's interesting how it will work with Switch
nothing.
JordiENP
Member
You need to remember any Nintendo decision when it comes to hardware, they do it because of the software, If Nintendo could use old microsd cards to do the breath of the wild demo with no loading and the Matrix Awakens on switch 2, they would use old micro sd cards. But it's not possible in any way, that and the fact they want modern games ported to the platform. It's not because Nintendo wants the best tech, it's because at this point there's no other option if they want a generational leap.I think people are making too much of there being a "successful collaboration with a customer to create a custom product." There's no description of what type of collaboration that is; could be a collab to create the product or to market, not to support it.
But either way, if Nintendo did ask Samsung to fix the troubled SD Express format, Nintendo's involvement would simply be indicating that it has a device that would drive up interest in the format, and then the addition of the SD Express pins/setup in its SD Card slot. It's a currently-existing format, the only difference is that now Samsung is making one. Readers for those cards are currently costly ($50 for a stand-alone dongle) and uncommon (Steam Deck does not support the format, and I'm not even seeing professional film cameras which support SD Express.)
...However, it's possible that the format just stalled out without a core use case, and a Switch successor might finally be the driving killer app. Users are pretty used to just buying the cheapest card they can find and the whole UHS/SD rating alphabet has confused the market, so SD Express has been DOA for many reasons. Now, a game device demonstrating why Express speeds are needed and beneficial, with a major brand name like Samsung jumping in to produce the cards with quality assurance and temp safety systems in place, might finally get this format going.
Samsung’s New microSD Cards Bring High Performance and Capacity for the New Era in Mobile Computing and On-Device AI
Samsung samples industry-first 256GB SD Express microSD card boasting speeds more than four times faster than current interface Samsung’s 1TB UHS-1 microSD card in mass production based on latest V-NAND technologynews.samsung.com
CamHostage
Member
They would not use removable cards to do an industry-pitch tech presentation. They would use the internal storage instead of the external storage; they would use an onboard memory unit (be it SSD or a fast/modern EEMC) on the dev kit motherboard.
JordiENP
Member
yeah, and the industry pitch with the demo pc-hardware needs to translate to the final product, something they can't do with current microsd cards.
CamHostage
Member
I'm confused why you're confused here?
You would not use a Micro SD card to do this demo. You would use an onboard memory unit.
So then when Switch 2 comes out as a final product, Nintendo would have a similar Onboard Memory unit in there.
Additionally, it would also have a Cartridge slot and a Removable Memory slot (assumedly, going by the Switch 1 config.) If that Removable Memory is of a much slower class than the Onboard Memory, you would have trouble playing games which need rapid access (same as PS5/Xbox Series cannot use supplemental USB drives to play games designed for the internal SSD.) And so yes, as you say, Nintendo would have to figure out some solution for how games would be purchased/managed across various storage devices. They'd either give it one big-assed onboard storage system like a SSD and have no external input (or just cartridges but no SD slot,) or they would rely on hotswapping games in use by priority to internal storage (which gets complicated and frustrating to manage as it puts it on the player to juggle their space,) or they would give it extra RAM to load up extra caches whenever possible (but that wouldn't really solve the problem of read speed or asset density) or they would find a removable storage device like SD Express or CFE which actually does the job (which is ideal, of course, but SD Express has so far shit the bed and other solutions are still in the labs, so easier said than done...) Whichever solution they figure out, though, Switch 2 will have a hard time being dependent on a format which so far has not lived up to promises; what they demoed here was likely not based on the promise that all storage would work the same in the Switch 2.
The Nintendo Switch EEMC already is said to operate at something like 250-300 MB/s bursts, and the Switch cartridge format itself is supposedly fast too. (SD Express only promises 150MB/s read/write in its cheapest cards, though that's minimum sustained, not burst speed.) File format and memory access API are probably more a problem on those than raw speed. Bottlenecks are holding it back, whatever format you plug into it, and a new Switch would use modern methods of erasing those bottlenecks. Get that done, and they can look at what else faster external drives can do.
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S0ULZB0URNE
Member
Nintendo’s next device will use a form of ssd tech.
This makes the most sense.
lame gag1990
Member
Nintendo are so behind the times in terms of technology. I don't believe it for a second.
CamHostage
Member
I get what conclusion you're trying to jump to here, but you're getting ahead of yourself...
Matrix Awakens is more RAM-intensive than storage-dependent; it's built on assets with procedural and modular design, so it's not streaming a massive city in, it's just putting bits of its 24 building kits together in different ways as you cruise through. (Steam Deck runs Matrix City Sample capably enough with 'normal' storage.) A BotW demo without loading could just be from there being more RAM to stem the segment loading (though I'm not sure why that would be a point mentioned by Nintendo as a feature of the demo if it wasn't for fast I/O; weirdly, the reports on there being no loading in the demo make no mention of why there was no loading, which kind of defeats the purpose of it being mentioned.) It'd make sense for these two demos to be showing something of a faster storage technology used in the Switch successor, sure, but it's not a requirement to make the demo work and it's not been a key discussion point in Switch 2 spec rumors that fast memory is a priority feature.
I'm not disagreeing that fast storage isn't critical to a Switch successor, or even that Nintendo would see that as worth a splurge for the sake of its new console's future. I agree, and have been eager to see I/O be a key advancement point for a new Switch. And something like SD Express could be beneficial in completing that solution. But what we are talking about here are removable, off-the-shelf storage cards. They are not the format that Nintendo would use to make game cartridges. They are not the format that would be used in the Switch 2's included storage system. (Unless Switch 2 oddly shipped with no onboard storage and instead used a SD Express card for all game and storage uses? Seems iffy.) They are simply a memory card format, which Switch 2 may or may not be able to access.
If you want to get into what type of storage Switch 2 might use (in addition to SD Express, whether or not this format gets included) to get that fast I/O, we can talk about that. For onboard storage, we're talking SSDs (which are spendy) or we can get into the cheaper but still promising advancements in EEMC. Raw sequential speed of even the best EEMCs caps at 250 MB/s, which would be fast enough for SATA comparisons (NVMe SSDs blow it away, but these SD Express minimums are not at NVMe speeds either) if it could sustain that speed. New layered 3D NAND can help newer versions of EEMC do faster random seeks and more sustained throughput, which trims the bottlenecks. These new EEMCs are still relatively small (64-128GB,) but they're cheap and they're durable and they sip power and they run sort of quickly where it counts.
And then for the cartridges and external storage, it's getting harder to find ways to improve things, but if the Switch successor did indeed have Gen4 PCIe/NVMe interface, doors would be open to blow through a lot of previous bottlenecks. SD Express and SD Express MicroSD is a possibility, maybe CF Express could be in the talks, a custom solution for the cartridges and/or a proprietary storage solution only for Switch 2 may be needed if SD Express continues to underwhelm or be unavailable in portable reader form (and/or security concerns eventually get Nintendo to go the Vita route,) etc. The interface base and the storage file format must come first before they decide what shape of plastic to put the chips on.
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CamHostage
Member
It's not exactly cutting edge tech. It's 4 years old, and it's already available in stores.
What would be new on Nintendo's part would be actually using it. Currently SD Express is only used by high-end video technicians, and even then, the cameras themselves don't have the card reader/writers on them yet, so it just speeds up the file transfers. Samsung and Nintendo getting together and saying, "OK, we have a use for this format so let's get serious about it," that might change things. SD Express is a promising format for removable storage, but it also has some issues holding it back from being as amazing as it looks in specs, so it is taking a long time to catch on. (And it also is guaranteed to have a higher price tag than most Nintendo gamers would expect to pay for a SD card, though the benefits may make it clear why there's a difference even though they look the same as all the other junky SD cards in your desk drawer.
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SegaSnatcher
Member
The good news is that new SD Express specifications (established Oct of last year, these are the first I've seen of the classified cards even though SD Express has been on the market a bit) now have a promised "Minimum Read/Write Performance" rate. So the cheapest SD Express cards (not the cheapest SD cards in general, just these new ones which match the SD Express marking and are playable in newer SD Card readers) is supposed to be 150 Mbytes/sec, and the most expensive is 600. That's nowhere near the theoretical 4GB/S, but a guaranteed min is better than a bullshit max. (...That is, assuming the min holds up.)
microSD Express Doubles Speeds, New SD Express Speed Classes Introduced
SD Association (SDA) today announced the latest evolution of SD Express memory cards doubling microSD Express memory card speed up to 2GB/s, plus fourwww.businesswire.com
SD Express is going to run you more money than a priced-to-move regular card; the main one that's out there was by Ritz Gear in 2022 was insanely $300 at launch for 256GB; that same card is now a more reasonable but still high-per-GB price of $60. (It says it can do 850MB/S read, 500 write, but those are maxes, not promises.) And that's a full-size SD Card, not Micro SD. So even if Nintendo does adopt this format with an onboard SD Express reader, and even if Samsung's SD Express cards prove that the first-gen was bad but the format can really deliver now, prices for the full 600-speed cards will set you back.
Still, I really hope all this works out. Super-fast game loading and data access would do a Switch successor wonders.
If those numbers are legit that is game changing for SD Card tech.