UHS-III spec for SD cards promises transfers of up to 624MB per second

The SD Association has released the specification of the new UHS-III standard. SD cards that fall under this will be able to achieve transfer speeds of 624MB per second. That’s more than double what UHS-II can do now.

Both SD and micro SD cards with the new speeds will appear on the market, the SD Association said. Also, both sdhc and sdxc cards can comply with UHS-III. SD cards that meet the new spec will still be the same size as existing cards that use UHS-I or II. This makes an upgrade possible, although it is still questionable whether the device that the SD card goes into can actually use the extra bandwidth.

The SD Association states that the development is capitalizing on the introduction of demanding technology, such as 360-degree cameras, 3D imaging, 8k video and gigabit wireless. SD cards that comply with UHS-III will be easily identified by the ‘III’ printed on the card.

It is not clear when SD cards with UHS-III will appear on the market. At the moment, the fastest available SD cards are still UHS-II cards. At the end of last week, Sony introduced a card with a read and write speed of up to 300MB per second.