Faster SD Cards Could Reach Devices Next Year

Memory cards based on a new specification will boost storage of consumer electronics to as much as 2TB, the SD Association said Thursday.

By Agam Shah
Thu, June 11, 2009

IDG News Service — Memory cards based on a new specification will boost storage of consumer electronics to as much as 2TB, the SD Association said Thursday.

Secure Digital memory cards based on the new SDXC (extended capacity) specification could be out as early as next year with a capacity of 64GB, with 2TB available at some future point, said Kevin Schader, director of communications at the SDA.

The SDXC specification was announced in January, but the SDA couldn't then provide a time frame for the release of products. The specification was released to SDA member companies in April, Schader said.

Companies including Panasonic have announced plans to develop memory cards based on the new specification. The SD Association has about 1,100 member companies, including Toshiba and SanDisk, involved in the design, manufacture and sale of products using SD technology.

SD cards can be slotted into consumer electronics devices to store images, video or other data. The new specification will replace SD slots and media based on the older SDHC specification commonly used in devices.

Memory cards in multiple sizes and capacity based on the SDHC specification, including the miniSD and microSD formats, are commonly used removable memory in mobile phones. Apple earlier this week said it would add SD card slots to new MacBook Pro laptops due for release later this year.

The SDXC specification upgrades the storage capacity and cuts the data-transfer bottlenecks that plagued earlier specifications. It calls for data transfers between SDXC slots and media at 104MB per second, quadrupling current speeds. That could reach up to 300MB per second in the future, Schader said.

Initial slots and media based on the new specification could reach data transfer rates of 52MB per second, Schader said, adding that consumers can expect that to improve in the future. He couldn't predict when storage capacities of SD cards would hit 2TB. SD cards today have 32GB of storage capacity.

The new slots will be backward compatible and support older SD media, he said. However, older SD slots will not support new media.

You are here: Business/Management Topics » IT Organization » News

Most Recent IT Organization Stories

White Papers »

Converged Infrastructure for Dummies

As you know, everything is mobile, connected, interactive, and immediate. This is exactly why organizations need a highly agile IT infrastructure in order to keep pace with extreme fluctuations in business demand. This book will help you understand why infrastructure convergence has been widely accepted as the optimal approach for simplifying and accelerating your IT to deliver services at the speed of business while also shifting significantly more IT resources from operations to innovation.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View

For this white paper, IDC performed an in-depth analysis of the business value of VMware View, defined as the expected ROI associated with the use of the solution as a platform for the targeted deployment of a virtual desktop infrastructure.

Virtualization reduces costs and complexity for mid-sized businesses

This paper explains virtualization, its benefits for mid-sized business and how IBM's virtualization strategy can help these companies reduce costs, improve services and simplify management.

A Standard Branch Office IT Platform to Optimize and Consolidate

Forrester Research makes recommendations on best practices to optimize branch virtualization and consolidation initiatives. See how a "thin" branch architecture, with key servers, services and applications in the data center that relies on a high-performing WAN connection, can offer the greatest efficiencies.

Maintaining Continuous Compliance - a new best practice approach

When trying to achieve continuous compliance with internal policies and external regulations, organizations need to replace traditional processes with a new best practice approach and new innovative technology, such as that provided by IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager.

Rewriting the rules of Patch Management

IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager helps organizations automatically manage patches for multiple operating systems and applications across hundreds of thousands of endpoints regardless of location, connection type or status.

Webcasts »

Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere

Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Architecting a Modern Approach to Data Management

Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.

Introduction to VMware View 5

VMware View™ 5 simplifies IT management while increasing end user freedom by delivering desktop services from your cloud. Building upon VMware's leadership in desktop virtualization, VMware View 5 delivers a high-performance user experience while giving IT greater policy control.

View this webcast and find out how VMware View 5 can help you:
- Deliver the highest fidelity experience of desktop services across any device and any network
- Simplify and automate IT management, security and control of desktop services
- Reduce the costs associated with your desktop environment

The CIO's View: Time-to-Value Through Automation

IT professionals are being asked to deliver faster "time-to-value" than ever before. An IDG Research survey found that CIOs are eager to invest in technologies that will enable them to get new applications and services up quickly, achieving faster time-to-value.

5 Steps to Successful IT Consolidation

Learn how to reduce IT management overhead, ease revision control, guarantee data security, scale systems more quickly and reduce server and software costs.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter