Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic brand products, today announced it will introduce "PRO HIGH SPEED Series" 1GB and 512MB SD Memory Cards this Fall that doubled the internal data transfer rates. These two SD Memory Cards use Panasonic's new LSI architecture and proprietary high speed technology to achieve
a data transfer speed of up to 20MB/s. Named the "PRO HIGH SPEED Series", the new memory cards will feature distinctive, newly-designed labels and packaging.
Sale of the memory cards worldwide is scheduled to begin in October. In Japan, 1GB and 512MB SD Memory Cards will be available on October 15, without manufacturer's suggested retail prices.
New Product Feature Outline
The new PRO HIGH SPEED Series SD Memory Card can achieve data transfer speeds of up to 20MB/s for an SD Memory Card when used with SD products that comply with a newly upgraded interface. Panasonic will also simultaneously launch a Cardbus compatible PC Card Adaptor as a host device to enable high-speed data transfer.
The name PRO HIGH SPEED indicates that the cards provide high-level performance compatible with the standard demanded by video professionals. The basic construction of the PRO HIGH SPEED Series card is employed in the recording medium (P2 Card) used by the Panasonic professional camera DVCPRO P2 system, which delivers the exceptional tapeless video capture performance and durability required by video professionals. The fact that this professional camera has been adopted by more than 40 leading TV broadcasters and tested at the recent Athens Olympics shows its reliability of both the camera and media.
PRO HIGH SPEED Series SD Memory Cards are compatible with existing SD-enabled products. They can be used with current SD-enabled products to achieve the same maximum high-speed data transfer of up to 10MB/s as that provided by Super High Speed Series.
Panasonic plans to release PRO HIGH SPEED Series Cards with doubled memory capacity in coming years.
Product Development Background
Since its introduction in 1999, the SD Memory Card has come to be used in a wide range of digital products including digital still cameras (DSC), digital video cameras, PCs, PDAs, and mobile telephones. Among these products, the memory card's major application has been storage of still images. The DSC market has recently seen rapid progress toward higher resolution, which has increased the size of data files and the need for higher performance. Consecutive shooting, an increasingly popular DSC feature, also requires high-speed transfer rates. In addition, there is a continuing popularization of functions to record and play back video images such as MPEG4 and MPEG2 using memory cards.
In the future, it is expected that more and more users will enjoy recording TV programs on SD Memory Cards for playback on different SD-enabled products. Since video data entails an extremely large file size, it stands to reason that there will be an increased need for high-speed data transfer.The PRO HIGH SPEED Series was developed to respond to this demand for high-speed data transfer.
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