Regulatory body SD Association (SDA) has introduced a new SD format at Mobile World Congress Shanghai. Called SD Express, the new SD 7.0 format ties in both PCIe and NVMe interfaces into the legacy SD slot for transfer speeds of up to 985 MB/s.
Not only it supports higher transfer speeds thanks to PCIe interconnect, the new SD Express also ups the maximum size possible on an SD card. Manufacturers can now fit up to 128 TB on a single SD card. Furthermore, SD Express cards are backwards compatible with current SD, SDHC and SDXC readers.
“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. “SD 7.0 delivers revolutionary innovations to anticipate the needs of forthcoming devices and content rich and speed hungry applications.”
Future applications of SD Express include 8K cameras, 360-degree cameras/videos, high-resolution slow-motion cameras, game systems, IoT devices and more. Expect the first SD Express products, which will be labelled as SDUC, sometime this year or early next year.
