Pansonic to introduce high-speed SD cards

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., better known for its Panasonic brand name, will begin selling a new series of SD (Secure Digital) memory cards internationally at the end of October that offer double the data transfer speed of its current fastest cards, the company said Tuesday.

Matsushita Electric, better known for its Panasonic brand name, will begin selling a new series of Secure Digital memory cards internationally at the end of October that offer double the data transfer speed of its current fastest cards, the company said Tuesday.

The cards, which have capacities of 512M bytes and 1G byte, are the first two members of its new Pro High Speed Series and are able to transfer data at a maximum rate of 20M bit/sec. The previous-fastest SD memory cards made by Panasonic, the Super High Speed Series, transfer data at speeds at 10M bit/sec, according to Karl Takahashi, a Panasonic spokesman.

The new cards need to be used with an upgraded PC card adaptor to achieve the full 20M bit/sec data transfer speed, but the new cards can be used in older devices, albeit at lower speeds, he said.

The 1G-byte card will be available in Japan from Oct. 15 for about ¥27,000 ($243) and the 512M-byte card will cost about ¥13,000.

Panasonic intends to release 2G-byte versions of the high-speed cards in 2005, 4G-byte versions in 2006, 8G-byte versions in 2007 and 16G-byte versions in 2008, Takahashi said.