BOISE, Idaho, April 10, 2018 – Micron (Nasdaq: MU) today announced general availability of the 128GB and 256GB density of edge storage microSD card solutions and collaboration with several leading video surveillance solution providers to promote surveillance-grade edge storage. Built on Micron’s industry-leading 64-layer 3D TLC NAND technology, the newly released solutions enable greater capacity in a smaller space, delivering up to 30 days of surveillance video storage in the camera itself.

Over 98 percent of all microSD cards sold globally in 2017 were used in consumer applications, according to IHS Markit¹. These consumer-grade memory cards are not designed and validated for commercial use in video surveillance applications. Micron’s industrial microSD cards are designed specifically for professional video surveillance use cases and include a three-year warranty for 24×7 continuous video recording usage. The Micron microSD card design and firmware is optimized 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, organizations have relied on the use of retail microSD cards that are not optimized for 24×7 recording. As a result, these cards may fail earlier and also experience video frame drops as high as 30 percent²,” said Amit Gattani, senior director of embedded segment marketing at Micron. “With a strong industry trend toward more analytics and artificial intelligence (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

Micron’s industrial microSD cards are specifically designed for IP video surveillance workloads and feature:

• Storage densities of 256GB, 128GB, 64GB, and 32GB, which enable more video to be stored at the edge, giving system designers increased flexibility
• At least three years of high-quality, continuous, 24×7 video recording³ in a wide 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 minimizes frame drops and video loss
• A two million hours mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) or 0.44 percent annualized failure rate (AFR), which is equal or better than most surveillance Hard Disk Drive⁴

Customer Enablement and Market Opportunity

According to IHS Markit⁵, 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 Micron’s release of increased capacities for their surveillance grade offerings, many leading professional video surveillance providers have adopted and deploying the solutions across their products with great 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 at Dahua Technology. “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 optimize solution design, increase deployment flexibility and lower total cost of ownership.”

“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 optimizing the systems for performance and cost,” said Yul Pi, product collaboration director at 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. Recognizing 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 optimize system resources and total cost of ownership,” said Shengfu Cheng, director of marketing and product development division at 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 optimized solution for this industry.”

”Small to medium businesses will drive significant growth in the coming years in the video surveillance-as-a-service market,” said Jon Cropley, senior principal analyst for video surveillance at IHS Markit, a global business information provider. “Currently, these organizations typically rely on backend recording solutions for data 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 of GeoVision, 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 total cost of ownership for our customers.”

Pricing and availability:

The 128GB ($59 MSRP) and 256GB ($119 MSRP) versions of the Micron Industrial microSD Cards are available now for ordering through Micron global distribution channels.

Micron is also showcasing the new 256GB Edge Storage solution at Security Industry Association’s (SIA) New Product Showcase at ISC-West trade event in Las Vegas on April 10^th, 2018.

For more information:

• Learn more about Micron’s industrial microSD cards at Micron.com/surveillance
• Micron’s previous announcement related to Surveillance Edge Storage portfolio

About Micron

We are an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions. Through our global brands — Micron®, Crucial®, and Ballistix® — our broad portfolio of high-performance memory and storage technologies, including DRAM, NAND, NOR Flash, and 3D XPoint™ memory, is transforming how the world uses information to enrich life. Backed by nearly 40 years of technology leadership, our memory and storage solutions enable disruptive trends, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous vehicles in key market segments like cloud, data center, networking, and mobile. Our common stock is traded on the NASDAQ under the MU symbol. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc., visit micron.com.

References & Sources

* – 30days of storage with average video bit rate of 0.75Mbps with 24hrs/day or 1.5Mpbs 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 8Mbps video bit rate for 256GB microSD card

4 – Reference WD Purple drive & Seagate Skyhawk HDD specs

5 – IHS Markit’s Top Video Surveillance Trends for 2018. Information is not an endorsement of Micron. Any reliance on these results is at the third party’s own risk. Visit technology.ihs.com for more details.