ISC-West: Micron 128 and 256GB Industrial Storage microSD Card Solutions

Micron Technology, Inc. announced availability of the 128 and 256GB density of edge storage microSD card solutions and collaboration with several video surveillance solution providers to promote surveillance-grade edge storage.

Built on the company’s 64-layer 3D TLC NAND technology, released solutions enable greater capacity in a smaller space, delivering up to 30 days of surveillance video storage in the camera itself.

Over 98% of all microSD cards sold globally in 2017 were used in consumer applications, according to IHS Markit Ltd. ⁽¹⁾. These consumer-grade memory cards are not designed and validated for commercial use in video surveillance applications. The firm’s industrial microSD cards are designed for professional video surveillance use cases and include a three-year warranty for 24×7 continuous video recording usage. The microSD card design and firmware is optimised to ensure a reliable, robust and low-maintenance system design that delivers 24×7 continuous recording capability with minimum video frame drops.

“Due to a lack of surveillance-grade solutions, organisations have relied on the use of retail microSD cards that are not optimised for 24×7 recording. As a result, these cards may fail earlier and also experience video frame drops as high as 30% ⁽²⁾,” said Amit Gattani, senior director, embedded segment marketing, Micron. “With a strong industry trend toward more analytics and AI in surveillance cameras, there is a growing demand for higher reliability and higher density storage in the cameras. Micron is addressing this need with industry-leading density of 256GB in a surveillance-grade microSD card.“

Edge storage: Industrial-quality storage designed
for professional video surveillance applications

The industrial microSD cards are designed for IP video surveillance workloads and feature:

• Storage densities of 256, 128, 64, and 32GB, which enable more video to be stored at the edge, giving system designers flexibility

• At least three years of high-quality, continuous, 24×7 video recording ⁽³⁾ in a range of temperatures and environments

• Technology for the cards to self-monitor and provide information on card usage and expected useful life remaining for each card

• Special firmware designed for continuous video recording, which minimises frame drops and video loss

• Two million hours MTTF or 0.44% annualised failure rate (AFR), which is equal or better than most surveillance HDD drive ⁽⁴⁾

* Individual card in ‘jewel case’
** Based on specific bit rate for each capacity (see datasheet)

Customer enablement and market opportunity
According to IHS Markit (5), demand for professional video surveillance cameras continues to grow rapidly. It forecasts that over 130 million professional video surveillance cameras will be shipped in 2018, up from about 100 million in 2016. Following the company’s release of increased capacities for their surveillance grade offerings, many professional video surveillance providers have adopted and deploying the solutions across their products with success.

“We are pleased that Micron is addressing the surveillance market with high reliability and high-performance edge storage products,” said Zhiming Li, product director, Dahua Technology Co. Ltd. “Micron’s new 256GB industrial microSD card now enables use of edge storage as the primary storage in many SMB solutions and secondary storage in enterprise solutions, enabling system integrators to optimise solution design, increase deployment flexibility and lower TCO.“

“Surveillance cameras are now deployed everywhere in highly distributed environments like smart cities and smart infrastructure. Edge storage of video and analytics related data in the surveillance camera gives unique flexibility to system integrators in optimising the systems for performance and cost,” said Yul Pi, product collaboration director, Infinova. “Micron’s new ultrahigh density microSD cards bring the reliability and performance required for surveillance systems.“

“The IP surveillance market continues to grow rapidly across all verticals and has created a rising demand for high-performance and reliable video storage. Recognising this increasing need, Vivotek has deployed Micron’s new ultra-high density microSD cards in our products to provide effective edge storage based solutions for both SMB and Enterprise use case that enhance design flexibility and optimise system resources and TCO,” said Shengfu Cheng, director, marketing and product development division, Vivotek, Inc. “It’s important to adopt high-quality, surveillance-specific microSD cards, and we are pleased that Micron is leveraging its 3D flash memory leadership to deliver an optimised solution for this industry.“

“SMBs will drive significant growth in the coming years in the video surveillance-as-a-service market,” said Jon Cropley, senior principal analyst, video surveillance, IHS Markit, a global business information provider. “Currently, these organisations typically rely on backend recording solutions for storage. However, an increasing number of systems are available that do not require local network video recorders. The emergence of high-density edge storage has played a major role in this.“

“Micron understands surveillance application cases, and launching ultra-high-density edge storage solutions based on 3D flash memory technology will change the way video is captured and stored in future surveillance deployments,” said David Huang, president, GeoVision, Inc., US division. “We view our collaboration with Micron as a way to leverage edge storage to improve flexibility in solution designs and deployments while effectively bringing down the TCO for our customers.“

The 128GB ($59 MSRP) and 256GB ($119 MSRP) versions of the firm’s industrial microSD Cards are available for ordering through the company’s global distribution channels. The firm has showcased the 256GB edge storage solution at Security Industry Association’s (SIA) product showcase at ISC-West trade event in Las Vegas, NV on April 10th, 2018.

* 30 days of storage with average video bit rate of 0.75Mb/s with 24hrs/day or 1.5M/s with 12hrs/day of video recording

⁽¹⁾ NAND Memory Market Tracker – Q4 2017, IHS Markit.
⁽²⁾ Micron System Lab test data
⁽³⁾ Micron lab test data based, with up to 8Mb/s video bit rate for 256GB microSD card
⁽⁴⁾ Reference WD Purple drive and Seagate Skyhawk HDD specs
⁽⁵⁾ IHS Markit’s Top Video Surveillance Trends for 2018