One thing to stay up for: Reminiscence card makers have solely lately begun unveiling merchandise that meet the SD Categorical efficiency commonplace, regardless of the specification having been obtainable for a very long time. These new playing cards function unprecedented speeds, aiding content material creators and broadcasters in shortly encoding high-resolution, high-refresh-rate video. Moreover, Western Digital plans to introduce commonplace SD playing cards with multi-terabyte capacities.
Western Digital unveiled a number of new reminiscence playing cards this week on the 2024 NAB Present in Las Vegas, pushing pace and capability to new ranges. With this announcement, Western Digital joins Samsung in introducing commercially obtainable ultra-portable SD Categorical storage in 2024.
The best choice for high-speed microSD playing cards in our SD card purchaser’s information – the SanDisk Excessive UHS-I U3/V30 A2 – incorporates a learn pace of roughly 200MB/s, however the newly introduced SanDisk SD and microSD Categorical variants can obtain practically 4 and a half occasions that pace. Western Digital’s testing means that they may attain 900MB/s.
The corporate does not point out write speeds, however the listed efficiency targets may practically double that of a typical SATA SSD. The merchandise are slated for basic availability beginning this summer season, however pricing stays unclear.
Western Digital plans to supply the Categorical playing cards in 128GB and 265GB capacities, however the firm can also be introducing the largest-ever UHS-I merchandise. The best-capacity playing cards at present obtainable high out at 1TB or 1.5TB, however WD plans to interrupt the 2TB barrier for SD and microSD playing cards in the summertime, with 4TB fashions coming in 2025.
Though the corporate hasn’t mentioned worth tags, 1TB playing cards can hover round $100 or $200, so merchandise doubling or quadrupling that space for storing may value a whole bunch of {dollars}.
Additionally learn: microSD and SD Card Shopping for Information
Samsung introduced its first SD Categorical playing cards final month, boasting 800MB/s learn speeds and 1GB/s write speeds, with a launch deliberate for later this 12 months. The corporate additionally unveiled its first 1TB microSD playing cards, albeit trailing behind the competitors.
The SD Categorical commonplace has existed for a while, and the SD Affiliation launched the SD Categorical 9.1 specification late final 12 months, which may harness PCIe 4.0 and NVMe {hardware} to attain speeds of 2GB/s. Nonetheless, producers have been sluggish to undertake the usual as a result of present merchandise can already deal with 4K video.
Use instances and supporting {hardware} for higher-performance reminiscence playing cards stay considerably restricted. Nonetheless, SD Categorical may show helpful for duties akin to 8K video and 120Hz video, or probably AI functions.