Lexar® Professional 2000x 64GB SDXC™ UHS-II card

Lexar Media, Inc. is a Chinese brand of

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use ...

products manufactured by the Chinese company Longsys. The Lexar "JumpDrive" trademark was often used synonymously with the term

USB flash drive Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply ( interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A bro ...

s when the technology was first adopted.

History

Early years (1996-2006)

Lexar was founded as an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

manufacturer Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ...

products based in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

. Products manufactured by Lexar include SD cards,

CompactFlash CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994. CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...

cards,

s, card readers and

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is a ...

s. Once a division of

Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas. The company's audio proces ...

, Lexar leveraged its parent company's experience in building ATA controllers in developing its own flash controllers. Lexar was spun off from

in 1996. Lexar was created by Petro Estakhri and Mike Assar. In 2005, Lexar was awarded $380 million in a lawsuit against

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

who copied Lexar's flash memory technology.

Under Micron ownership (2006-2017)

Lexar was acquired by

Micron Technology Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, includin ...

in 2006, and subsequently merged with Crucial Technology under the name Lexar Media, a subsidiary of Micron. In September 2007, Lexar extended its agreement with

Eastman Kodak Company The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpo ...

to develop and market

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

-branded

products worldwide. On June 26, 2017, Micron (the then-owner of the brand) announced it was to discontinue the Lexar retail removable media storage business and put part or all of the business up for sale.

Under Longsys ownership (2017-present)

On August 31, 2017, the Lexar brand and trademark rights were acquired by Longsys, a flash memory company based in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern provi ...

, China. In 2018, Lexar reentered the flash storage market. In January 2019, the company unveiled the first SD card with a storage capacity of 1

terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

(TB). In December 2019, Lexar demonstrated a prototype 7.5 GB/s PCIe 4.0 SSD which is set to be the world's fastest consumer SSD. In April 2020, Lexar released its world's smallest memory card (nCARD) featuring Xtacking tech from Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC). In June 2020, Lexar announced its entry to the DRAM market by unveiling seven different DDR4-2666 memory kits for mainstream laptops and desktops. Lexar also plans to release faster, 3000 MHz and 3200 MHz memory kits in the future, along with kits "with heatsinks and RGB lighting", targeting gamers and enthusiasts.

USB FlashCard

USB FlashCard is a flash memory card format developed by Lexar, and announced on December 13, 2004.Lexar – Newsroom – Press Releases
There is a wide range of existing memory card formats such as SD, xD, and

; the major advantage of USB FlashCard is that the cards are in fact standard USB flash drives.Lexar – USB FlashCard
The USB FlashCard uses a modified USB Type A plug which keeps the total thickness of the card to under 4.5 mm. Because of its small size and USB compatibility, a USB FlashCard could, for example, be accessed by either a digital camera or a modern

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or te ...

without the need for a card reader. Lexar has published the specifications for its USB FlashCard form factor on its website in an open and royalty-free format, in the hopes that other memory card and portable device manufacturers will adopt it. The specifications for the USB FlashCard published by Lexar show its dimensions to be 31.75 mm × 12 mm × 4.5 mm. The volume is comparable to the widely adopted SD cards (32 mm × 24 mm × 2.1 mm). The USB FlashCard has nearly the same length as the SD card, but is half as wide, and approximately twice as thick.

References

External links

* {{Micron Technology 1996 establishments in California 2006 mergers and acquisitions 2017 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1996 American subsidiaries of foreign companies Computer companies established in 1996 Computer companies of the United States Computer memory companies Corporate spin-offs Manufacturing companies based in San Jose, California Micron Technology Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area