Transcend Intros MicroSDXC Card with SLC Caching for Increased Burst Write Speeds

[btarunr]

Transcend introduced the first microSDXC memory card to feature SLC caching technology. The new USD230I memory card from Transcend features a host-transparent internal logic that treats a small portion of the 3D TLC NAND flash as SLC, to improve write performance in short bursts. This should particularly help in usecases such as high-quality burst photography or high-resolution video recording. The card is also endowed with a broad operational temperature range of -40 to 85 °C. The USD230I offers sequential transfer-rates of up to 100 MB/s, with up to 3,400 IOPS random access. It comes in capacities of 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB, offering endurance (TBW) of 36 TB for the 8 GB variant, 70 TB for the 16 GB and 32 GB variants, and 140 TB for the 64 GB variant. The company didn't reveal pricing.



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[danbert2000]

I don't think that SLC mode would be very useful to photographers. A lot of modern cameras have a fairly large internal buffer in order to guarantee burst shots at a certain speed. So the camera isn't going to shoot any faster potentially until that buffer is used up on the camera. At that point, you're probably not going to get much of an increase in performance with this SLC caching over just a fast microSD card with guaranteed speeds.

For video, this makes even less sense, because if this card is only fast enough for 4k video when the SLC caching is used, then it has a finite time for recording that is likely much lower than the camera or regular, fast cards would have.

I can only really see this SLC caching working with random read or write use cases, like using apps off of the card. I am interested in the fact that the cards have stated endurance ratings. That is fairly uncommon for these cards and again point at a card that is targeted at application or whole-OS usage.