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SD Cards Reach SSD Speeds: Up to 128TB Capacity!
12 Feb
Summary
- SD Express offers PCIe and NVMe interfaces for near-SSD speeds.
- New SDUC cards support capacities up to a theoretical 128TB.
- Consumer availability of high-capacity cards lags behind standards.
The SD Association has announced advancements in its SD Express and SDUC standards, bringing storage closer to Solid State Drive (SSD) performance. The SD Express interface combines PCIe and NVMe, enabling speeds of up to 1GB/s with PCIe 3 x1 and approximately 4GB/s using PCIe Gen4 x2. These speeds are beneficial for tasks like running applications directly from removable storage or managing large AI datasets.
Capacity targets are also soaring, with SDUC cards now shipping in multi-terabyte configurations, starting at 2TB and scaling up to a theoretical 128TB. The industry group cites growing demand from AI, high-resolution video (4K to 16K), drones, VR, AR, and edge computing devices that generate vast amounts of data. Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2 is noted to use microSD Express cards, facilitating faster game loading directly from removable media.
Despite these announcements, the availability of such high-capacity cards in the consumer retail market remains limited. While the SD Association states that multi-terabyte SDUC cards are shipping, these deployments are likely in industrial, embedded, or specialist sectors rather than mainstream shops. The gap between announced standards and actual consumer purchase options persists.
