SD Express memory cards reach up to 985MB/s and can be up to 128TB in size

The SD Association has announced the SD 7.0 specification. In it, the organization describes new SD Express memory cards that use the PCI-e interface and the NVME protocol, for speeds of up to 985MB/s.

According to the SD Association, the new SD 7.0 specification allows memory cards with a maximum storage capacity of 128TB. That is a theoretical capacity; currently the maximum capacity for sdxc cards is 2TB. In practice, there are no cards on the market with a storage capacity of more than 512GB.

The high speed made possible by the use of the pci-e 3.0 interface and the nvme 1.3 protocol is useful for recording slow motion or 8k video in raw format, for example. Cameras that can do that currently usually use SSDs, or CFast 2.0 or XQD memory cards. Those alternatives already use the PCI-e interface.

While the SD Express cards use a new interface, they keep the current format and work in older devices as well. The cards fall back to the uhs-1 specification when used in equipment that is not yet prepared for the SD Express standard. Conversely, it is possible to use older SD cards in an SD Express card slot.

The SD Association has put a white paper online explaining the SD Express standard. It is not yet known when there will actually be devices on the market that support SD Express cards, and when the memory cards will be released.