Sandisk beats Kingston in SDHC card race

MEMORY MANUFACTURER Sandisk has announced that its latest secure digital high capacity (SDHC) cards can hit transfer rates of 45MB/sec.

Sandisk's Extreme Pro SDHC Ultra High Speed (UHS) SDHC card comes with a reported transfer rate that is 10MB/sec faster than Kingston's UltimateXX SDHC card that was launched yesterday. Sandisk is pitching its Extreme Pro SDHC cards at photographers with cameras that can also record high definition video, with capacities between 8GB and 32GB.

Aside from headlining the 45MB/sec write speed of the card, Sandisk asserts that in order to meet the new UHS specifications, its cards have a minimum sustained write speed of 10MB/sec that is still capable of recording HD 1080p video. Sandisk claims the turn of speed in its SDHC cards is due to its proprietary Power Core memory controller.

In order to improve reliability and durability, Sandisk has included an automatic error-code correction engine and write levelling algorithms. The outfit has also slapped a lifetime warranty on its Extreme Pro SDHC cards.

Although Sandisk's latest SDHC cards offer high performance, the majority of semi-professional and professional digital SLR cameras still use Compact Flash cards, which have transfer rates as high as 100MB/sec. The most important part of the new SDHC specification is not the maximum data transfer rate but rather the minimum speed, which as Sandisk has alluded to is fast enough to store HD 1080p video at 30 frames per second.

Sandisk might find that the need for users to buy new cameras to support the new UHS standard, despite its impressive performance, limit the demand for its high-end SDHC cards for some time. µ