At MWC Shanghai, the SD Association (the group that sets memory card standards) just announced a new format called SD Express, which adds PCI Express and NVMe interfaces to the cards.
With SD Express we’re offering an entirely new level of memory card with faster protocols turning cards into a removable SSD,” said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, SDA President, in a statement. “SD 7.0 delivers revolutionary innovations to anticipate the needs of forthcoming devices and content rich and speed hungry applications.
SD Express’ use of popular PCIe and NVMe interfaces to deliver faster transfer speeds is a savvy choice since both protocols are widely used in the industry today and creates a compelling choice for devices of all types. The SD Association has a robust ecosystem with a strong history of integrating SD innovations and has earned the trust of consumers around the world, said Mats Larsson, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource, in a statement.
Thanks to these speeds, SDA says SD Express cards will act like removable SSDs, and are compatible with billions of existing SD hosts in the market, giving manufacturers a new storage facility to store mammoth content. With SDUC, the maximum storage of SD cards goes up to 128TB, significantly higher compared to the earlier 2TB maximum capacity of SDXC cards. Previous peak transfer speeds seen in UHS-III SDXC cards were 624MBps. SD Express cards will initially be offered in the SDHC (32GB), SDXC (2TB), and SDUC (128TB) formats.
SDA said SD Express cards can be used in UHS-I, UHS-II, UHS-III and SD Express host devices, but faster performance levels will only be attained when matching the card to the host device. Thereby, if you wish the transfer rate to be at 985MBps, it is best to use these cards with a SD Express host.
----------
If you liked this article, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for tech news, reviews and video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
