The Impact of the SD™ Card Then and Now

The SD card foresaw the future. Here’s what it’s telling us now.

By Yosi Pinto

When Micky Holtzman and I were asked to work on a new solution combining SanDisk’s memory production, our knowledge in MMC and developing a flash controller, I had no idea how far this project would take us. It was 1999, and flash memory was expensive and hard to compete with storage technologies of the time like floppy disks (believe it or not, more than five billion were sold per year worldwide around that time). We worked in utter secrecy, traveling the world and meeting with our partners at Toshiba and Panasonic as if we were covert agents. SanDisk’s Engineering and SD card-related strategy at that time was led by Yoram Cedar.   

The team driving the concept of the SD card had a vision of what this new standard could power. Every aspect of the design was important – from what it could support, to how you insert it into a device, to how the communications worked. It wasn’t just about creating a technology, it was about how to turn an idea into a commercial product.

To read the full article go here...