Samsung announced today that it has developed the industry's highest density MMC cards for portable applications.

Based on Samsung's 8-gigabit (Gb) NAND flash memory, the MMCplus card will be introduced with an 8-gigabyte (GB) density, allowing it to store 2,000 MP3 music files or eight hours of DVD-quality movies. The 8 GB card will be part of a full line up of MLC-based MMCplus cards that also will include 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB offerings.

With added density and higher performance, the new Samsung MMCplus cards are designed to greatly enhance user convenience for a variety of mobile applications.

Samsung also is introducing a separate card advancement: a higher performance MMC that more than triples the performance of conventional small-form-factor memory cards. The higher performance version makes use of SLC NAND flash memory, providing a read-speed of 40 MB/s and a write-speed of 25 MB/s. The advanced MMCplus card can save six MP3 songs per second, or two hours of DVD-quality movies in less than a minute. The high-performance card will be available in two variations: a 1 GB and a 2 GB density.

Samsung's new high-density and high-performance MMCplus cards are expected to be available in the second half of this year.