SD cards with 128 TB capacities and 985 MB/s speeds coming in 2019

SD Version 7.0 specifications have been recently finalized by the SD Association, and the improvements over the current standard are impressive. The most notable upgrades are the peak throughput of 985 MB/s that is achievable via PCIe/NVMe connections, and the storage capacity that jumped from 2 TB to 128 TB.

The new SD cards will feature an “Express” (EX) denominator to indicate the improved specs. In order to allow for future upgrades, the new specs reserve card areas for new pins that will be added at a later date. Some other new features worth mentioning are the increased power consumption that went up to 1.8 W and may further boost performance, the addition of a Host Memory Buffer that acts as a cache memory to boost read/write speeds, plus the integration of Multi-Queue tech, which speeds up simultaneous transfers.

With the greater demands imposed by 4K/8K video processing, virtual/augmented and mixed reality applications, autonomous vehicles and Internet of Things ramifications, the increased throughput of almost 1 GB/s will raise the performance nearly tenfold.

First to benefit from the new Express specs will be the SDHC, SDXC and SDUC cards which should be released at some point in 2019, and the SD Association also intends to upgrade the MicroSD cards at a later date.

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