New SD Card standard allows NVMe transfer and processing speeds

The SD Association has launched a new standard to accelerate transfer speeds of regular SD cards. 

Look! SD cards performance

With the new SD Express standard, regular SD cards can hit a speed of up to 985 megabits per second (Mbps), dramatically faster than the current speed of UHS-II (312 Mbps) and UHS-III (624 Mbps) SD cards. 

This also supports PCIe 3.0 interface with NVMe protocol on the second row of pins, which is already present on modern microSD and SD cards. The SD Association, however, noted that this new system would currently speed up the regular SD cards. 

Not only users get to transfer huge amounts of data faster than before, but it also allows you to process data in real time, including editing RAW images, slow-motion videos, 360-degree footage or load game files for virtual reality and augmented reality.

The organization also stressed that while the new PCle standard moves files quickly, it does not drain energy compared to the current SD cards. 

SD Express memory card samples

The SD Express card can still be incorporated with old devices, hitting the same UHS-1 speeds. 

SD cards equipped with this new upgrade will have a mark "EX I" to distinguish from the regular cards. The first ones to have this standard would be SDUC, SDXC, and SDHC, while microSD cards will be next. 

Moreover, the capacity of micro SD card has surged from two terabytes (TB) with SDXC to 128 TB given the new SD Ultra-Capacity (SDUC) standard.

Source: GSMArena