Sometimes, we insiders get pretty esoteric in the way we describe technological improvements. Take SuperSpeed USB 3.0 for example. Most consumers know it’s faster than USB 2.0—after all, 3.0 is bigger than 2.0 so it must be better—but perhaps they don’t know how much faster. And really, they don’t care that much about 0.5Gbps versus 5Gbps because that’s pretty ethereal. It doesn’t really tell you what you’ll get in real world activities.
Lexar apparently understands. The company’s recent email newsletter for its latest USB 3.0 S73 JumpDrive has this clear explanation:
“You’ve got better things to do with your time than waiting for your files to transfer. With the new Lexar JumpDrive S73 USB 3.0 flash drive, you can transfer files faster—like a 3GB HD video clip in less than 2 minutes. Compared to the nearly 20 minutes it would take using a standard USB 2.0 drive, that’s a huge time savings.”
We can all identify with that, I think. I know I’ve sat, waiting for that little red LED on my USB drive to stop blinking so I could pull the drive and get on with the day.
Following up on a link associated with the Lexar S73 JumpDrive, I found this closely related video about capturing digital images. The video includes a consumer-friendly discussion of the concepts of the NAND Flash controller and the link between the number of NAND Flash “lanes” and write speed. Here is is:
The Lexar S73 JumpDrives are available in capacities from 8 to 64Gbytes and read/write speeds to 45/20 Mbytes/sec. Of course, the speed depends on the JumpDrive’s internal NAND Flash storage controller and the number of NAND Flash chips available.
Although the Lexar video actually discusses SD cards, the same concepts apply to the design of controller chips for USB storage drives and for SSDs. Performance depends on the NAND Flash storage controller and the number of lanes to NAND Flash devices in either case.
For more information on advanced NAND Flash storage controller design, click here.
Denali Memory Report 