SD Express: the next fast SD standard is coming
The SD Association announces the next SD standard. The new SD Express cards enable read speeds of up to one gigabyte per second.
MicroSD cards are mainly used in smartphones to expand their memory - provided the mobile phone has a corresponding card slot. Current MicroSD cards store up to one terabyte at speeds of around 100 megabytes per second. The new SD standard is set to change this.
Faster and faster
The SD Association, guardian of the SD standard, presented version 7 last year, promising speeds of up to 985 megabytes per second. The maximum capacity has also been increased to 16 terabytes. At the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, the SD Association showed an initial demo of the new standard.
In the test demonstrations, the card achieved just under 820 megabytes per second when reading and 485 megabytes per second when writing. The new cards are backwards compatible with the older standards, so they also work in previous readers and smartphones - of course, their speed is limited by the older standard of the reader.
New standard, new connection
In order to benefit from the speed of the new cards, a second row of contacts is now required, which the SD Association had already specified for the UHS II standard.
When mobile phone manufacturers will jump on the bandwagon and adapt the standard - and whether they will do so at all - is unclear. The SD Association has also given no indication of when the first SD Express cards will appear on the market.
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