SD Express arrives, the memory card revolution

The SD Association, a nonprofit organization responsible for setting the standards for SD memory cards, has announced the latest version of this popular device that we all use in our daily lives. SD Express offers a maximum data transfer rate of 985 MB / s, and increases the maximum storage capacity to 128 TB.

SD Express significantly increases speed through the use of PCI Express and NVMe interfaces

The new SD Express standard adds the PCI Express and NVMe interfaces to support the speeds and capabilities necessary for increasingly demanding uses, such as very high resolution video capture and playback, 360 degree cameras, IoT devices, mobile devices, cars and drones.

We recommend reading our post on the best SSDs of the moment SATA, M.2 NVMe and PCIe

SD Express uses the well-known PCIe 3.0 specification and NVMe v1.3 protocols defined by PCI-SIG and NVM Express, respectively, on the second row of pins used by UHS-II cards today. This new standard substantially improves on the previous one, which was limited to a maximum of 624 MB / s and a limit capacity of 2 TB.

SD Express will arrive on SDUC, SDXC and SDHC memory cards, which will also be compatible with previous versions of existing devices. SD Express offers a whole new level of memory card with faster protocols that convert memory cards to a removable SSD. SD Express offers breakthrough innovations to anticipate the needs of upcoming, high-speed, content-rich devices and applications.

Thanks to the great advances that are being made with memory cards, the performance gap with SSDs is getting smaller and smaller, making for an excellent high-speed and extremely compact storage medium.

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