The Shanghai Mobile World Congress sees the SD Association announce SD Express-- "revolutionary" memory cards leveraging the PCIe 3.0 specification and NVMe v1.3 protocol to deliver the fastest speeds yet.

Part of the SD 7.0 specification, SD Express cards are capable of transfer speeds of up to 985MB/s, and reach capacities up to 128TB. The format should remain backwards-compatible, meaning any speed-rated card can be used with UHS-I, UHS-II, UHS-III and SD Express host devices. However the aforementioned speed advantages will only be attained when matched with an appropriate host device.

“With SD Express we’re offering an entirely new level of memory card with faster protocols turning cards into a removable SSD,” the SDA says. “SD 7.0 delivers revolutionary innovations to anticipate the needs of forthcoming devices and content rich and speed hungry applications.”

Such cards should prove popular with customers wanting large amounts of fast and removable storage. The SDA suggests a number of applications, including data-intensive wireless communications, super-slow motion video, RAW continuous burst photography, 8M video capture and playback, 360-degree cameras, applications running on cards and mobile devices, gaming systems and multi-channel IoT devices.

Go SD Express