Phison Pioneers SD Express (SD 7.0) Cards

Phison Electronics, known for its SSD controllers, announced that it will be the first in the industry to release PCIe SD cards that support the NVMe protocol. These cards are called SD Express and comply with the SD 7.0 specification adopted in 2018. The company plans to start shipping new removable media of 256 GB and 512 GB in March.

In January, Adata announced SD Express cards, but it promises to start shipping only in the second quarter.

SD Express cards support UHS-I and are backward compatible with all existing SD slots. But in PCIe slots, they bring new levels of performance. The new cards are three times faster than their predecessors with UHS-II interface and come close to CF Express Type A and UFS cards. More specifically, PCIe Gen3 x1 SD Express Cards deliver speeds up to 870MB / s.

According to Phison, SD Express cards can be used as removable solid-state drives (SSDs) for still images and high-definition video. For example, for RAW burst photography, 8K video shooting, and 360 ° panoramic video. The cards are also suitable for gaming systems, IoT devices, high-speed data backups, and vehicle storage, including temporary 5G data storage.

Recall that in May last year, the SD 8.0 specification was adopted, which fixed the use of the PCIe 4.0 interface in SD Express memory cards.

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